It’s almost certain that this year is going to be worse than even 2022,” Fretwell said. “It’s a rather depressing story for emperor penguins.” The smaller penguin species of the Antarctic and the subantarctic primarily feed on krill and squids. Species found farther north tend to eat fishes. For example, in Antarctica, Adélie penguins feed primarily on small krill, while chinstraps forage for large krill. While the larger species, including Emperor and king penguins, mainly eat fishes and squids. The US government has previously listed the polar bear, the ringed seal and various species of coral on its endangered species list due to the threat of the climate crisis. Most penguin species of penguins are monogamous, where one male breeds only with one female during a mating season. Some female penguins may have one to three partners in one season and some males may have one or two partners.

Foreign predators, such as foxes, dogs, and cats, are also threats to penguins. These predators often eat penguin eggs or harass breeding pairs, and in some cases, kill the penguins. In Australia's Middle Island, fairy penguin populations plummeted after red foxes were introduced and began to prey on the penguins.Few creatures living at the poles are immune to the effects of climate change. But Antarctica’s largest penguin is profoundly vulnerable, biologists said, despite being generally tough birds. Penguins face several threats to their populations, such as climate change, oil spills, illegal fishing, foreign predators, and plastic pollution. About two-thirds of the penguin species are listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List. Klages N (1989) Food and Feeding Ecology of Emperor Penguins in the Eastern Weddell Sea. Polar Biol. 9, 385–390. It is at present unclear whether this behaviour of breeding on ice shelves is a new phenomenon associated with recent climate change, or one that has always existed but has not yet been documented. Models of how animals adapt to climatic change exist [17] and we examine how this phenotype plasticity fits into those theories (see discussion).

It is “unprecedented,” Fretwell and his co-authors wrote, to see total breeding failure across an entire region. And the future looks even more bleak. There have been no large scale systematic searches for emperors on ice shelves (although many flights and surveys have overflown iceshelves). Ainley DG, Clarke ED, Arrigo K, Fraser WR, Kato A, et al. (2005) Decadalscale changes in the climate and biota of the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, 1950s to the 1990s. Ant Sci 17; 171–182. The third breeding location on top of an ice shelf is near the Jason Peninsula, at the northern limit of the Larsen C Ice Shelf. In 1893, the explorer and sealer Carl Anton Larsen was the first to visit this area [18], [19]. He reported on 4 December 1893 that “The kongepenguinerne (king penguin) are very numerous in those (ice) fjords” (ice creeks are a favoured breeding location of emperor penguin colonies). When recording this, his ship was located on the northern side of what became known as the Larsen C Ice Shelf (noon position of 67.00°S, 60°.00W). At the time of this discovery little was known about emperor penguins and they were often confused with the similar, but smaller king penguin ( A. patagonicus), a species which Larsen would have been familiar with from his sealing trips to South Georgia. It is likely that Larsen’s sighting late in the breeding season indicated a colony in the vicinity. Although exhaustive satellite searches of the sea-ice in the area during previous studies [14], [15] were conducted, no colony was found.

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For the study, Fretwell looked at satellite images of five known emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea region, which saw a particularly stark decline in sea ice last year.

Climate change is another major threat to penguins living in Antarctica like emperor penguins and Adelie penguins. These species rely on the region’s ice sheets to breed and hunt. As sea ice melts due to warmer temperatures related to climate change, these species are losing their habitat. According to a 2008 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) study, an estimated 50% of the emperor penguins and 75% of the Adelie penguins will likely decline or disappear if global average temperatures rise above pre-industrial levels by just 2 degrees Celsius.King penguins live in the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, Crozet Islands, Kerguelen Islands, the Prince Edward Islands, Macquarie Island, and Heard Island and McDonald Islands. They have the longest breeding cycle of any bird, at 14 to 15 months. King penguins are the second-largest penguin species globally and have the largest penguin population outside of Antarctica, with around 1.6 million breeding pairs. Their current status is Least Concern.