Scientists don't agree on how to save food source
Associated Press
CAPE TOWN, South Africa – The cute, knee-high critters bray like donkeys and draw tourists near Cape Town. But African penguins – the continent’s only species of the flightless bird – are at risk of extinction.
As shoals of anchovies and sardines have migrated south into cooler waters, the population of African penguins that feeds on the fish has plummeted by 90 percent since 2004 along South Africa’s west coast, once the stronghold of Africa’s only penguin species.
This decline, recorded by South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs, led to four key fishing grounds being declared off limits seven years ago in an experiment to see whether the measure could help save the penguins. But scientists are still debating whether fishing has helped push the species to the brink of extinction.
In the 1930s, South Africa’s largest penguin colony had 1 million African penguins, and there were many other colonies. Now, only 100,000 of the birds remain in all of South Africa and neighboring Namibia, the only two countries where the species exists. In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the African penguin endangered.
Both fisheries scientists and bird specialists agree that the decline of the African penguin began around 2004 with a southern shift in anchovies and sardines away from the hub of colonies along South Africa’s Atlantic coast. Scientists are unsure why the fish have moved, considering as possible causes climate change, overfishing or natural fluctuations.
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