All the World Likes a Penguin

This week's post is by Fen Montaigne, senior editor of Yale Environment 360 online magazine, and author of the newsly released book, Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica, which chronicles the author's five months spent in the frozen continent, working alongside Bill Fraser and the endearing Adélie penguins he studies (Photograph Copyright Fen Montaigne).

One of Antarctica’s legendary explorers, the Englishman Apsley Cherry-Garrard, had it right when he said, “All the world loves a penguin.” And few penguins are as beloved as the classic, tuxedoed species, the Adélie — the knee-high creatures who comport themselves, Cherry-Garrard noted, “like old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their black tail-coats and white shirt-fronts.”
Bill Fraser has been coming to Palmer Station, a small U.S. science base on the Antarctic Peninsula, since 1974. In that time he has developed a deep respect for the Adélies, which he calls “the toughest animals I’ve ever encountered.” Once, Fraser came upon a female Adélie that had been grievously wounded by a leopard seal. The seal had ripped open the penguin’s chest, and Fraser could peer inside and see the Adélie’s lungs. Despite her injuries, the penguin recovered and managed to continue rearing two chicks.
Now, however, Adélie penguins in the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula have encountered an obstacle they can’t overcome: rapid warming, which has deprived the Adélies of a vital feeding platform in winter as sea ice melts. Populations of Adélies in Fraser’s study area have plunged from more than 30,000 breeding pairs in 1975 to 5,600 today. The long arm of man has reached down to Antarctica in the form of global warming, posing a threat to the continent’s two ice-dependent penguin species — the emperors and Adélies. “Here you have this unbelievably tough little animal,” says Fraser, “able to deal with anything, succumbing to the large-scale effects of our activities.”