Researchers claim King Penguins under threat in Antarctica

These majestic monarchs of the far south the King Penguins live on the northern edge of Antarctica, and new research now shows that the birds are under serious threat by global warming.

A lack of squid and fish in their feeding grounds is threatening their existence. Perhaps more menacingly, the king penguin is at the top of the food chain. In that particular area and as such indications that their numbers are depleting may be strong evidence of other serious problems beneath the ice.

The king penguin could be dying out because of serious changes to their ecosystem that is the claim in a research paper about to be published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy’s of sciences.

Scientists from the sea CNRS in France have been studying king penguin populations in the far southern Indian Ocean. At a place called Possession Island for nearly 10 years.

Scientists have discovered that higher sea temperatures in the region, where King Penguins winter, have seriously decreased. The amount of prey that the penguins feed on this has had a knock-on effect of reducing the numbers of adult King Penguins.

The study discovered that there was a decline in excess of 9% in the king penguin population. For every 0.26 degrees C, that the surface of the sea warms. The practical repercussions of this are that the penguins are facing a high risk of serious loss of numbers, with a predicted 0.2 degrees C rise in sea temperatures in the area in the next 10 years, and at least double that over the next 20 years.

This scenario could prove devastating to the King penguin population, and that of many other marine creatures