62,000 African Penguins Starving to Death Highlights Humanity-Driven Extinction Crisis

[cbabe]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/african-penguin

62,000 African Penguins Starving to Death Highlights Humanity-Driven Extinction Crisis

“If a species as iconic as the African penguin is struggling to survive,” said one researcher, “it raises the question of how many other species are disappearing without us even noticing.”

JESSICA CORBETT
Dec 05, 2025

A study published this week about tens of thousands of starving African penguins is highlighting what scientists warn is the planet’s sixth mass extinction event, driven by human activity, and efforts to save as many species as possible.

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As the study explains: “African Penguins moult annually, coming ashore and fasting for 21 days, when they shed and replace all their feathers. Failure to fatten sufficiently to moult, or to regain condition afterwards, results in death.”

The team found that “between 2004 and 2011, the sardine stock off west South Africa was consistently below 25% of its peak abundance, and this appears to have caused severe food shortage for African penguins, leading to an estimated loss of about 62,000 breeding individuals,” said co-author and Exeter associate professor Richard Sherley.

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Sherley said that “high sardine exploitation rates—that briefly reached 80% in 2006—in a period when sardine was declining because of environmental changes likely worsened penguin mortality.”

Humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels is warming ocean water and impacting how salty it is. For the penguins’ prey, said Sherley, “changes in the temperature and salinity of the spawning areas off the west and south coasts of South Africa made spawning in the historically important west coast spawning areas less successful, and spawning off the south coast more successful.”

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[hunter]

1. I'd like to see commercial fishing banned worldwide.

We could just as well raise fish, shrimp, and other "seafood" in ponds entirely isolated from natural waterways. Imagine Iowa as the seafood capital of the U.S.A., producing multi billion dollar harvests of fish, shrimp, "mini lobsters," etc., annually.