Need we say more? No.

The folks over at Discoblog (of Discover Magazine) are wondering if the phrase "penguins on treadmills" needs much further explanation. Nope! Read the post, watch the video, and I'm sure you'll agree.

Sad news for rockhoppers

Bad news on the penguin front - it seems that penguins affected by the oil spill in the South Atlantic in March aren't doing very well. Very few of them have survived despite a valiant rehabilitation effort, and the survival rate has been lower than that seen in other oiled seabird rescue operations. The reduced success rate is thought to be due at least in part to the remoteness of the oil spill's location, which delayed the arrival of rescuers and gave birds time to preen and consume more toxic oil. The penguins affected were Northern Rockhopper Penguins, which are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, so the next few years will be a tense time as researchers assess the impact of the spill on the overall population.

The thought of thousands of dead rockhoppers serves as a sobering reminder of how human mistakes have widespread implications for the environment.

Penguin awareness day

Well, what a surprise! Today is penguin awareness day, and we weren't even aware of it. Why should we be aware of penguins? Some people think that they are bellwethers of climate change, and that if Adelie penguin numbers continue to decline, humans need to worry. So it's not just that they are cute, or even that they are amazingly well-adapted to live in harsh environments. It's that they have thrived for thousands of years, and our planet can't be in good shape if their numbers are declining.

Penguin cheer-up

Is 2011 off to a rocky start? Just keep watching this video.

Everybody loves Adelies

Adelie penguins are increasingly seen as indicators of climate change. A new grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation will contribute to the body of knowledge on Adelies and how their foraging opportunities might be affected by warming weather. If you want to learn more about the current evidence on how global warming is already affecting Adelie penguins, go here!

New penguin species added to endangered species list

The Center for Biological Diversity has claimed a victory in its quest to have the U.S. government add penguins to the endangered species list. The government finally decided to list five penguin species - the Humboldt penguin, the yellow-eyed penguin, the white flippered penguin, the fiordland penguin, and the erect-crested penguin - this week. CBD hoped to get more penguin species listed in an attempt to force the Obama administration to focus on climate change, which the CBD lists as the primary threat to penguins. What does this mean for the protected species, none of which obviously live anywhere near U.S. territory? Well, for starters, all U.S. operations in areas where these penguins live are covered - so a fishing boat will have to make sure its gear doesn't harm penguins, for example.

Though this is good news for those penguins, the continuing unwillingness of many governments, including the U.S., to address climate change is nothing short of depressing. It's a shame that people have to come up with creative ways to force officials to take real actions against climate change. Electric cars are great, but where's our Cool Biz? Will governments ever get real with people and admit that we all have to start making significant changes and investments towards a more sustainable future? No one's being asked to live in a yurt, but we can't continue our current lifestyle. The easy way is cutting emissions and paying higher taxes now, or maybe trying the radical Japanese option of wearing lighter clothing when it's hot outside so we can give the air conditioner a break. The hard way is waiting until Bangladesh is underwater and all the penguins are dead.

Evolution and the Macaroni penguin

People often get confused about the meaning of evolution and natural selection - they assume that every trait in a particular organism must serve a particular purpose as the result of these inexorable, unerring processes. But that's not necessarily true. Sometimes genetic drift drives evolution and organisms wind up with traits that serve no clear purpose, and sometimes traits or structures may no longer serve a purpose but not be detrimental enough to be acted upon by natural selection (the appendix in humans is perhaps one of these). It is possible that the egg-laying habits of the macaroni penguins are a result of one of these alternative pathways. Some macaroni penguins lay two eggs, first one small, then one big, then discard the smaller egg. Since eggs usually represent the expenditure of significant amounts of energy for birds, why would these penguins waste time making an egg that won't ever hatch? Scientists aren't sure why some penguins do this, but they do know now why that first egg is so small. It's because penguins that lay the smaller egg are the ones that lay them immediately after coming back to land. The ones that wait a bit after returning to land have higher levels of a protein important for egg development and lay a normal-sized egg.

In any case, it's always interesting to try to understand the mysteries of evolution.

Will people care about climate change and overfishing if they harm cute animals?

It's a no-brainer that animals like Antarctic penguins that are dependent on krill, that are in turn dependent on sea ice, won't do all that well in a warmer climate. Some, including the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) would downplay the idea that there krill might become a problem. MSC recently certified the Antarctic krill fishery as sustainable. Throughout the process, the consultants assessing the sustainability of the fishery insisted that the catch was low, because there are thought to be millions of tons of krill, and a very small percentage of that estimated amount was being fished. But ASOC colleague David Ainley explains that there's a big difference between the overall number of krill or other fish and the number that you, Jane and John Q. Penguin, are going to get to eat. Penguins, Dr. Ainley says, need a lot of food. And looking for that food burns even more energy, so it's bad if they waste time going to locations where prey is no longer plentiful due to fishing.

People (most of them, anyway) don't have emotional attachments to krill and the other fish penguins eat. There seem to be few people who don't find penguins at least a little charming. Is it possible that if environmental problems can be shown to hurt innocent penguins who just want to waddle around cutely, people will start demanding better from their leaders?

Stalking seals and penguins for science

I suppose I shouldn't really call tagging animals in order to analyze their movements stalking, but if you, John and Jane Q. Nonscientist, visit a new public website that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has established, you might just be stalking unsuspecting Antarctic animals. Scientists from NOAA have tagged fur seals, leopard seals, Weddell seals, chinstrap penguins and gentoo penguins so that they can analyze their movements during the Antarctic winter, when it's too difficult for human researchers to follow them in person. They've also made it possible for the public to see the locations of the tagged animals over at http://swfsc.noaa.gov/AntarcticPredators/. Stalking, but for science! I hope Mark Zuckerberg doesn't find out about this.

I can't wait to see what these Antarctic predators are up to during the harsh Antarctic winter.

Suit filed on behalf of penguins

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration to try to force them to finalize the listing of several penguins on the endangered species list. From their press release:

"Today’s lawsuit challenges the Interior Department’s illegal delay in finalizing the listing of the seven proposed penguin species; the Center and TIRN also intend to file suit against Interior for denying protections to emperor and rockhopper penguins. Warming oceans, melting sea ice, and fishery harvests have wreaked havoc on penguins’ food supply: krill, an essential nutrient for penguins, whales, and seals, has declined by up to 80 percent since the 1970s over large areas of the Southern Ocean. Reduced food supply has diminished populations of species ranging from southern rockhoppers and Humboldt penguins of South American islands to the African penguin in southern Africa.

Endangered Species Act listing would protect penguins from multiple threats, raise awareness of their plight, and increase research funding. Federal approval of fishing permits for U.S.-flagged vessels on the high seas, for example, would require analysis and minimization of impacts on penguins. The Act also has a key role in managing greenhouse gas pollution by compelling federal agencies to look at the impact of the emissions generated by their activities on listed species and reduce those impacts."

In many ways this is a no-brainer. Protecting penguins won't cause the same kind of outcry that protecting other species does because there aren't really a lot of human activities that would be affected - it would just, as the press release says, raise their profile and ensure that the few activities that do affect them aren't causing them undue stress.

Adorable penguins replaced by jellyfish?

The Census on Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), part of the Census on Marine Life (COML), is reporting that Antarctic krill populations are being "decimated" due to climate change. And unfortunately it looks like jellyfish are poised to take over as penguins and other krill predators decline. Jellyfish can better exploit the copepods that are taking over for krill. Huw Griffiths, a participant in CAML, says that he's already seeing jellyfish in the Southern Ocean. Check out a gallery of the amazing animals CAML discovered in the Antarctic.

Not to disrespect jellyfish, which are pretty interesting in their own right, but it would be a shame to lose this unique ecosystem. The CAML has identified many new species that we know barely anything about. So it's not just penguins that might suffer when the Antarctic environment changes. We could be losing out on species that look like aliens from another planet, species that produce compounds that could treat human beings, species whose determined waddling is never anything less than delightful. And in return we'd just get jellyfish.

Polar Obsession

A while back, NPR reported on the very cool new book by a photographer who has focused his work on the poles. It sounds as if he's endured some hardships over the course of his career - bear aggression, frostbite, the usual - but the result are stunning photos that Paul Nicklen hopes will motivate people to preserve these remote wildernesses.

The best reason to read the story or buy the book, though, may be the encounter Nicklen had with a female leopard seal who tried to befriend him by bringing him a series of penguins in various stages of, well, being alive in hopes that she could feed him. I think it was a little rude of him not to eat one, no? It's difficult to catch penguins underwater - they move pretty fast.

Emperor Penguins are AWESOME.

I clearly do not monitor ASOC's Flickr account closely enough, or I would have noticed that several of our emperor penguin pictures are being used in an AwesomeOff. Or should that be AWESOMEOFF? Anyway, should you decide to check out this contest, I think you will agree that male emperor penguins are way more awesome than the Notorious B.I.G. doll, or the Peekaru, which is a garment that allows your parasitic twin to finally get some air.

Male emperor penguins are of course famous for their dedicated egg tending. The female penguin lays the egg, and then, exhausted from that process, treks back out to the ocean to feed. The male, meanwhile, remains several miles inland (no predators there), incubating the egg, which sits on top of his feet under his warm overhanging belly blubber. He slowly burns off his fat stores whilst keeping this egg warm and away from the ice, in the middle of some very unpleasant weather. He even feeds the chick with some stored-up food when it hatches, despite being pretty close to starvation himself. Only when his mate returns to take over caring for the chick will he be able to return to the ocean and get a decent meal. It gets so cold that the male penguins huddle together to form a giant rotating mass so as to share the burden of being fully exposed to the wind (penguins move in and out of the warm center). They somehow manage coordinate this without letting the eggs roll off their feet. It's no fun, even if the result is an adorable fluffy penguin chick.

Having defeated three opponents in this month's AwesomeOff, male emperor penguins are waiting for a new contest. When they get one, make sure to vote for them. I don't even care who their opponent is - of the slate of June combatants, I count exactly zero others who can survive in the Antarctic without protective gear or food, balance an egg on their feet for weeks at a time, and look good doing it.

New Uses for Satellite Imagery in Antarctica

Monitoring emperor penguin colonies from space by looking for traces of their waste in satellite imagery may not be as glamorous as tracking ice shelf collapses and glacier movements, but penguin researchers are finding satellites quite helpful these days. Knowing where to look for colonies are will greatly assist researchers in making accurate population counts, and thus in tracking changes in the overall species population over time. Antarctica is vast, and travel is difficult, so locating colonies by space no doubt saves considerable time, money and effort. For example, satellite imagery showed that six previously known colonies had moved to new locations.

Antarctic Warming Causing Ecosystem Shifts

Antarctic warming has led to major changes in the weather of West Antarctica, altering the food chain. As reported in the journal Science, scientists examining thirty years of data on phytoplankton concentration have determined that major alterations to the food web have occurred due to warming. Even more troubling, the climate of the West Antarctic peninsula appears to be "undergoing a transition from a cold-dry polar-type climate to a warm-humid sub-Antarctic–type climate," according to the abstract for the Science article. The scientists examined satellite and other data to determine that concentrations of a certain type of phytoplankton had declined substantially along the peninsula, most likely due to stronger winds, increased cloud cover, and mixing of surface waters with deeper ocean water.

When phytoplankton moves, krill (who eat the phytoplankton) have to follow suit. Krill-dependent predators such as penguins then also must go where the krill are. So while there is less plankton in some areas, there is now more in others, particularly the southern regions of the peninsula. Penguin species not dependent on krill, such as Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins, have taken the place of krill-dependent Adelies. It remains to be seen what long-term consequences these shifts will have on penguins and krill, but if phytoplankton populations continue to decline, it could have disastrous consequences for penguins and other krill eaters.

Rising Carbon Dioxide Could Spell Doom for Antarctic Food Chain

Researchers from Australia discovered that krill exposed to atmospheric carbon dioxide at the levels predicted for the year 2100 suffered fertility-harming deformities. As this article mentions, the general public doesn't have the same affinity for krill, a shrimp-like crustacean, that it does for whales and penguins, but without krill, those species will not survive. The absorption of carbon dioxide into the ocean is called ocean acidification, and is clearly a serious threat to ocean life. Krill is a small organism, yet is an integral part of the Antarctic food web.

Climate Change and Penguins

A new WWF report examining the potential impact of climate change on penguins determined that a 2 degree Celsius rise in temperature would significantly reduce populations of Emperor and Adelie penguins. The increase in temperature would reduce the extent of much of the ice on which penguins live. While some penguin species would be better able to adapt than others, climate change would clearly have serious consequences for Antarctic animals. The report primarily concentrates on the impact of reduced sea ice, and does not incorporate the impact of temperature increases on the Antarctic food chain. Thus, the effects of climate change on Antarctic animals could be even more severe than the report predicts. Read the press release here.

Penguins - A Sentinel Species?

In a recent article in the New York Times, P. Dee Boersma, a longtime penguin researcher, warns that the declining numbers of some penguin species bode poorly for the marine environment as a whole. Threats to penguins include overfishing, pollution, and climate change. Although these animals may live far away, their problems cannot be ignored. Check out some more articles about the impact of environmental problems on penguins here, and here.