GCC#11-Penguins
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Sound up of penguins
Those are Adelie penguins, the smallest of five penguin species that live in the Antarctic.
RN: The penguins, whatever the biological species, it comes down, are populations and the success evolutionarily speaking; if you will, depends on food, sex, weather, and breeding territory. If all are in sync, great.
But all may not be in sync for the two and half foot birds, says naturalist and writer Ron Naveen . He's project director of the Anatarctic Site Inventory. Since1994 the Inventory has recorded baseline data for such things as ice and snow cover and bird and seal colonies on the Antarctic peninsula Last year's results for Adelies raised big concerns.
RN: We were finding that our counts were down 20-90%.
Other studies suggest that since 1972, their populations have dipped by 40%. Naveen and others suspect that warmer winter temperatures, up nearly 9 degrees F since the 1950s, may be affecting ice floes, on which Adelie Penguins and their primary food source depend..
RN: In the last 4 winters with another one just about to come upon us. We've had diminished ice cover in the Antarctic and that is serious because it is in the wintertime, with the ice covering the sea that larval krill, larval fish come up from the depths. Then presumably their going to find sustenance under the ice, plankton and hide from predators‹so without heavy ice cover some concern warmer winters have caused a lot of fish and krill to be diminished well before their time.
This series on global climate change is supported by the New England Science Center Collaborative and Roy A. Hunt Foundation.