Colony of Antarctic penguins nears extinction

PALMER STATION, Antarctica - William Fraser remembers when the ice floes and rocky outcrops near this U.S. outpost were thick with Adélie penguins and the constant, almost deafening roar of their calls made it impossible to hold a conversation.

“You could not go anywhere without seeing hundreds to thousands of Adélies,” says the ecologist.

Today, the Adélies outnumber people in this icy patch of the world by 100 to 1. The ratio sounds impressive until Fraser notes that the penguin population has shrunk by 80 percent since he began studying it in 1974, and that he expects the knee-high birds to be extinct in eight years.

What's to blame? Fraser, president of the Polar Ocean Research Group, says global warming is part of the problem because it has made it harder for the penguins to forage and breed.

When he first arrived at Palmer Station, Fraser says, the climate was cold and relatively dry. Now it is warmer and wet, “a bit like southeast Alaska," he says. "That environment did not exist at Palmer 30 years ago.”

Peninsula problem
Palmer Station, the smallest of three permanent U.S. research bases on the continent, is near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, a finger-like piece of land that points at South America.

The region is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. Winter temperatures have risen by between 9 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit since recordkeeping began about 50 years ago, and the annual sea ice that covers the ocean near Palmer Station lasts 25 percent to 30 percent fewer days than it did in the 1970s.

Adélie penguins spend 90 percent of their lives at sea, swimming or huddled on ice floes in one of the world’s harshest climates.

In 1974, about 15,200 breeding pairs nested each summer on a handful of windswept islands near Palmer Station.

Daniel Grossman William Fraser looks at a decimated Adélie penguin colony on Torgersen Island near Palmer Station, Antarctica.

In 2003, there were 5,635 breeding pairs. “Right now, you can walk on some of these islands and it is completely silent," Fraser said at the time. "It’s sad.”

During the 2005 breeding season, Fraser could find no breeding pairs on a rocky outcrop called Litchfield Island. It marked the first time in at least 700 years that, according to paleontological evidence from an excavation, Adélie penguins hadn't nested there.

The latest breeding season ended early this year. Speaking from his home in Montana, Fraser said his team counted only 3,393 pairs of Adélies.

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