The Emperor Penguin and its Endangered Enviroment

The emperor penguin is one of the most interesting species of penguin. This flightless animal lives on the Antarctic ice and in the frigid surrounding waters. This bird has a life span of 15-20 years and lives in colonies. Its diet is mainly that of a carnivore. The majority comes from fish. With all the beauty and intriguing life style of this penguin, not all is good. This penguin is in danger. What is causing this danger? It is not any predator in its wild habitat, it’s the effect of human ignorance. Climate change is slowly destroying the ice the penguin lives on. The emperor is on a downward spiral in which extinction is possible at the end of this century. With climate change at a dangerous level, warming may melt sea ice at rates which will decrease its habitat to nothing. With all these dangers there is still more, over fishing by humans is depleting the food source. In this paper I will outline and describe the problems these penguins face. I will also give a brief background on this flightless bird. Emperor is the largest of all penguins—an average bird stands some 45 inches (115 centimeters) tall. Penguins withstand physiological adaptations and cooperative behaviors in order to deal with an incredibly harsh environment, where wind chills can reach -76°F (-60°C)(Van Woert, Michael). They huddle together to escape the wind and reserve the warmth. Individuals take turns moving to the group's protected and relatively warm interior. Once a penguin has warmed a bit it will move to the perimeter of the group so that others can have protection from the icy elements. Emperor penguins spend the long winter on the open ice—and even breed during this harsh season. Females lay one egg and then promptly leave it behind. They go through a long hunting trip that lasts some two months! Depending on the extent of the ice pack, females may need to travel some 50 miles (80 kilometers) just to reach the open ocean, where they will feed on fish, squid, and krill. At sea, emperor penguins can dive to 1,850 feet (565 meters)—deeper than any other bird—and stay under for more than 20 minutes (Van Woert, Michael). Male emperors keep the newly laid eggs warm, but they do not sit on them, as many other birds do. Males stand and protect their eggs from the elements by balancing them on their feet and covering them with feathered skin known as a brood pouch. During this two-month bout of babysitting the males eat nothing and are at the mercy of the Antarctic elements. When the female penguin returns to the breeding site, it brings a belly full of food that it regurgitates for the chicks. Meanwhile, their duty done, male emperors take to the sea in search of food for themselves. Mothers care for their young chicks and protect them with the warmth of their own brood pouches. Outside of this warm cocoon, a chick could die in just a few minutes. In December, the Antarctic summer, the pack ice begins to break up and open water appears near the breeding site, just as the young emperor penguins are ready to swim and fish on their own. Emperor penguins eat a variety of fish, crustaceans and cephalopods. The primary source of food is generally fish, in particular the Antarctic silverfish. Other fish, glacial and hooked squids and Antarctic krill also regularly pop up in their diet. The majority of their feeding is better done in open water or on the underside of the sea ice where the fish run. An adult penguin can dive to great depths. These depths can reach 500 meters. These penguins can be very quick as well. Topping out at speeds of 10-20 km/h (Spencer, Lloyd). Observers have seen some penguins actually blow bubbles into the cracks under the ice to flush fish out of them. They work cooperatively and as a team when hunting. They coordinate their diving and benefit the colony as a whole. These fishing trips can extend over weeks, taking penguins hundreds of miles away from there colony. From climate change to over fishing, extinction may be in the near future. Perhaps the biggest threat to the emperor penguins is, of course, global warming. The Earth's temperature is slowly rising, which is due to greenhouse gases, which is due to littering. Greenhouse gases are gases in an atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. With this emission of radiation our earth is heating up. The slightest change in the penguin's habitat could completely destroy it. The rise of a couple of degrees may not seem like a lot to you, but it can be the decider of life or death of thousands of Emperor Penguins. What global warming is when carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually (Stefoff, Rebecca). If global temperatures continue to rise the emperor penguin in Terre Adélie, in East Antarctica may eventually disappear, according to a new study by led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI 2012). The head of this institution and lead biologist Stephanie Jenouvrier says "Over the last century, we have already observed the disappearance of the Dion Islets penguin colony, close to the West Antarctic Peninsula. "In 1948 and the 1970s, scientists recorded more than 150 breeding pairs there. By 1999, the population was down to just 20 pairs, and in 2009, it had vanished entirely." Just like in the many cases around Antarctica it is lead to believe it is directly correlated to the decline in sea ice. Unlike other sea birds, Emperor penguins breed and raise their young almost exclusively on sea ice. If that ice breaks up and disappears early in the breeding season, massive breeding failure may occur, says Jenouvrier. "As it is, there's a huge mortality rate just at the breeding stages, because only 50 percent of chicks survive to the end of the breeding season, and then only half of those fledglings survive until the next year," she says (WHOI 2012).

Disappearing sea ice may also affect its food source. The bird feeds primarily on fish, squid, and krill, a shrimp like animal, which in turn feeds on zooplankton and phytoplankton, tiny organisms that grow on the underside of the ice. If the ice goes, so will the plankton, causing a ripple effect through the food web that may starve the various species that penguins rely on as prey. To project how penguin populations may be in the future, Jenouvrier's team used data from several different sources, including climate models, sea ice forecasts, and a demographic model that she created of the population at Terre Adélie, a coastal region of Antarctica where French scientists have conducted penguin observations for more than 50 years.
This process of long term penguin breeding and climate conditions was key to her process of seeing the penguin future . If you want to study the effects of climate on a particular species, there are three pieces that you have to put together. Researchers say "The first is a description of the entire life cycle of the organism, and how individuals move through that life cycle (WHOI 2012). The second piece is how the cycle is affected by climate variables. And the crucial third piece is a prediction of what those variables may look like in the future, which involves collaboration with climate scientists (ADW 2009).” Marika Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research is one such scientist. who followed all those steps. She specializes in studying the relationship between sea ice and global climate, and helped the team identify climate models for use in the study.Working with Julienne Stroeve, another sea ice specialist from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Holland ultimately recommended five distinct models. "We picked the models based on how well they calculated the sea ice cover for the 20th century," she says. "If a model predicted an outcome that matched what was actually observed, we felt it was likely that its projections of sea ice change in the future could be trusted (ADW 2009).” Jenouvrier (WHOI 2012) used the output from these various climate models to determine how changes in temperature and sea ice might affect the penguin population at Terre Adélie. She found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at levels similar to today -- causing temperatures to rise and Antarctic sea ice to shrink -- penguin population numbers will diminish slowly until about 2040, after which they would decline at a much steeper rate as sea ice coverage drops below a usable threshold. "Our best projections show roughly 500 to 600 breeding pairs remaining by the year 2100. Today, the population size is around 3000 breeding pairs," says Jenouvrier (WHOI 2012).
The effect of rising temperature in the Antarctic isn't just a penguin problem, according to Caswell. As sea ice coverage continues to shrink, the resulting changes in the Antarctic marine environment will affect other species, and may affect humans as well. "We rely on the functioning of those ecosystems. We eat fish that come from the Antarctic. We rely on nutrient cycles that involve species in the oceans all over the world," he says (Coswell 2012). "Understanding the effects of climate change on predators at the top of marine food chains -- like Emperor penguins -- is in our best interest, because it helps us understand ecosystems that provide important services to us (Coswell 2012). These penguins in the warmer areas may spend more of their time in the water to be able to cool off. This can make them more likely to be eaten by predators though, because they are in the water for extended lengths of time. They also use plenty of energy to swim around so they will then have to hunt for more food in the water to maintain their needs. While there is research to indicate many species of penguins are making changes so they can adapt to the climate change, it doesn’t mean we should allow it to continue. They are doing what they must in order to survive. Yet these changes can easily upset their natural balance of things. As a result there is an increased risk of adults dying as well as their offspring not making it to maturity. In some species of penguins, such stressful changes result in them not participating in reproduction at all. It may sound insignificant to this topic but some penguins actually get sunburn. They live in warmer climates where it is possible for them to become too hot. Some of them need to cover their feet with their flippers while on land to prevent them from being sunburned. Others have to continually attempt to cool their bodies due to the excessive heat. The young are very vulnerable too because they are born with no feathers or very few of them so the rays from the sun can easily penetrate to their skin. What happens to these penguins in the future is completely on our shoulders. Many doubt the validity of global warming and climate change. With this doubt come a lack of help and seriousness about the subject. However, with the education about such issues it is hopeful that more people will take a firm stand to make changes for themselves and for future generations. Next, we will see how over fishing my man can directly effect the Emperor penguin and its endangered life. Researchers studying a colony of penguins have found that parents are forced to swim more than 25 miles further away from their nests in order to find food. When the chicks are hatched the parents continue to make 100-mile journeys to feed them, and are away for days on end. But over the last decade scientists have discovered that the journey has become even tougher as the forager has to travel a further 25 miles away from the nest to find sufficient fish. The extra distance is endangering the very survival of colonies and also forcing them to move ever farther north to nest. That distance might not sound like much, but they also have to swim another 25 miles back, and they are swimming that extra 50 miles while their mates are back at the breeding grounds, sitting on a nest and starving. Why is this? Its because humans are collecting krill -- a shrimp-like crustacean that is an important part of the diet -- in ever-increasing numbers and taking other fish in a way that transforms the ecosystems that have sustained the birds for centuries ( Vanwoert 2013). Overfishing happens when we fish so fast that they don't have time to reproduce. Most of our larger fish, have been fished out because we are not letting them reproduce at all. And because of this we are pushing the population lower and lower. And if we push it down to it's lowest point, there will soon be no more fish to catch, and if that happens, the whole ocean ecosystem will be ruined. Animals that eat the fish, like penguins, which will soon have nothing to eat if we fish up all the fish. What this does is puts a dent in this on-going cycle. Commercial overfishing of krill and fish on the Antarctic seas is putting increasing pressure on food chains and food availability for penguin populations and could trigger the catastrophic collapse of many marine species. "Fish stocks are under enormous pressure from commercial fishing, and their depletion will in turn affect the survival of many Antarctic species," said Paul Ponganis, a physiologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California (NSF 2011). Many experts believe that increased tourism in Antarctica could lead to a negative impact on penguin populations. "The Antarctic is an extremely fragile environment, and the mere presence of thousands of people visiting colonies during the breeding period has the potential for damage to the population," said Ponganis (Ponganis 2008). "Most people don't realize that merely viewing wild animals can cause them stress, which in turn might affect their chick-rearing abilities," he said. Studies actually show penguin colonies where there is no human disturbances have a much greater population than those being disturbed. The federal Fish and Wildlife Service took the first step in helping this penguin in 2007 declaring that the emperor penguin and nine other species of penguin need the protections of the Endangered Species Act. The penguins may join a short but growing list of species, including polar bear and two corals found off Florida, where survival is deemed at risk in part because of the increasing warmth of the atmosphere and the oceans. Much is being done to help these struggling penguins. From cinema to the WWF, penguins have been in the media for the past couple of years. In 2005 a feature length documentary titled March of The Penguins amazed its audience. This portrayed the struggles of the penguins perfectly, it opened the eyes of the people and help make some changes in the ways people live their lives. With these changes we see that technologies exist today to make cars that run cleaner and burn less gas, modernize power plants and generate electricity from nonpolluting sources, and cut our electricity use through energy efficiency. The challenge is to be sure these solutions are put to use. Another movie was made to show the dangers the penguins have due to over fishing. This one is a much light hearted animated film titled Happy Feet. This one is about a penguin struggling through life, as he is a misfit, and the fish population is depleted. Researchers find these penguins and discover the issue. These movies entertained the audience but also brought the realization of these penguins future to the eyes of the world. This is a serious thing and is thankfully becoming very popular in the media. Last, many organizations like the WFF (World Wildlife Fund) have set up adoption services and ways people can donate and help save these penguins. The main push to help these penguins is on us. As dwellers of this world we must learn to live greener and smarter. Using energy efficient cars, modernize power plants, and as simple as recycling our plastics all can help the future of these beautiful emperor penguins.

Works Cited
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"The Emperor Penguin : Aptenodytes Forsteriis." The Emperor Penguin : Aptenodytes Forsteriis. HERBWEB, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.

Barber-Meyer, S. M., G. L. Kooyman, and P. J. Ponganis. "Trends in western Ross Sea emperor penguin chick abundance and their relationships to climate." Antarctic Science 20 (2008): 3-11.

Spencer, Lloyd. "Emperor Penguins: Aptenodyptes Forsteri." Emperor Penguins: Aptenodyptes Forsteri. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.

Stefoff, Rebecca, and Rebecca Stefoff. Al Gore: Fighting for a Greener Planet. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2009. Print.

Van Woert, Michael. "Emperor Penguin." National Geographic. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "Melting sea ice threatens emperor penguins." ScienceDaily, 20 Jun. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.