Young emperor penguins’ far flung travels take them beyond protected areas

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-08-31 09:01

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Juvenile emperor penguins spend 90% of their time outside of existing and planned marine conservation and management areas in the Southern Ocean. Researchers tracked 8 emperor penguins during their first year at sea and found that they travelled up to 1500 km beyond the species’ habitat range, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Ensuring that enough penguins can reach reproductive age (4 or 5 years old) is integral to the species’ long-term survival, especially as global warming threatens to further reduce their reproductive success. Authors of the study say their findings underscore the importance of defining the range of endangered species using data from all life stages, in order to limit juveniles' encounters with fisheries and other industrial marine activities.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Juvenile emperor penguin range calls for extended conservation measures in the Southern Ocean

Juvenile emperor penguins in the Weddell Sea spend 90% of their time outside the range of proposed, and existing, Marine Protected Areas. Researchers used satellite-tracking to monitor penguin’s first year at sea in the Southern Ocean region for the first time. Juveniles travelled as much as 1500km beyond the ‘extent of occurrence’ (EOO) currently defined by the IUCN. Ignoring young age classes may misdirect management and conservation efforts, the authors said.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Centre Scientifique de Monaco

Funder: Funding. This study was funded by the Centre Scientifique de Monaco with additional support from the LIA-647 and RTPI-NUTRESS (CSM/CNRSUniversity of Strasbourg), by The Penzance Endowed Fund and The Grayce B. Kerr Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant no. ZI1525/3-1 in the framework of the priority program ‘Antarctic research with comparative investigations in Arctic ice areas’

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