After three decades out of the public eye, a giant colony of king penguins has lost 90 per cent of its population, according to a new study, reports NY Times.
The colony of 500,000 breeding pairs, long considered the largest of king penguins in the world, lived on the Île aux Cochons (or, less elegantly, Pig Island), a French territory in the Crozet archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean between South Africa and Antarctica.
But the penguins haven’t been counted in person since 1982 when researchers last visited. In late 2016, researchers flew over it by helicopter and saw noticeably fewer penguins than expected.
Since then, by closely examining three decades of satellite images, researchers have concluded that there are just 60,000 breeding pairs left on the island.
“It was really a surprise for us,” said Henri Weimerskirch, a co-author on the new paper, published in Antarctic Science, and a member of the research teams in 1982 and 2016. “It’s really very depressing.”
The research team suspects that climate change could be playing a role, as it has with other colonies of penguins in parts of Antarctica. But competition for resources, diseases and relocation may possibly have contributed to population losses.
