We are killing the signature species of Antarctica

Penguins are the signature species of Antarctica and Adélie penguins must be considered “the” penguin. Pictures of these black and white penguins, hobbling around on the ice or standing on the ice edge before plunging into the water is a common illustration of life in Antarctica. But for most people, this is still an image from very far away, even if some of us have enjoyed meeting penguins at a zoo.

Many year ago, during a research cruise to Antarctica, I had the privilege to see Adélie penguins in their real environment. I watched rows of penguins tracking over the pack ice on their rout to the breeding colonies. I have even been to a colony like that, when we set foot on South Georgia. And I have been standing on an iceberg looking across crisp blue water meeting the gaze of a group of penguins huddling together on another iceberg.

I am both very much aware of and knowledgable about the ongoing climate crisis. But having this experience of meeting penguins in their own environment makes it gut wrenching to read the news about the recent catastrophe that has affected the breeding of Adélie penguins. In a colony with about 40,000 penguins, all but two (2!) chicks have died of starvation this year. I try to reconcile this message with my mental picture of tiptoeing around thousands of nestling noisy penguins; I try to imagine silence and emptiness. It’s hard and it’s sad.

Of course it is a complicated picture that has caused this disaster. Life in nature is a complicated web, you start pulling in many strings and at one point there will be a fracture, even if it is hard to see just what straw that broke the camels back. But we know many of the factors that has set the scene for this disaster:

• Increasing fisheries of krill, the Antarctic shrimp depletes the food resource
• Unusual changes of pack ice means a harder voyage for the parents when returning from search for food
• Elevated temperature due to man made climate change causes freezing rain to fall, something the fluffy chicks can not cope with

We might think that the fate of penguins have no great effect on us in our urbanised and digitised societies. But the penguins are yet another canary in the coal mine. We do not know and are even ignorant and avoiding the knowledge about which factor that might break the back of our life as we know it. But beyond any rational thinking, any time we risk loosing a species or an ecosystem, we destroy some part of the beauty of our common planet. It is time we start asking ourselves if our lifestyle with its focus on quick rewards and material consumption is worth this sacrifice.