I'm actually...a little bit devestated

11/09/2005 05:23:00 pm


I was procrastinating big time today and decided to see if there was anything about penguins in the news.
Those of you who know me well enough to know about my slight preoccupation with penguins will understand my devesatation about the following comment:

A piece of the biggest iceberg in the world B-15A (it's about the size of Cyprus..or rather, was..) has broken off. This in itself is not so great because it just gives a little sample of what global warming has to offer. But anyway, that's not the point.

The point is that the 6th largest Adelie penguin colony has its breeding grounds on Ross Island, and its feeding grounds in the sea off Ross Island. Which is exactly where the piece of iceberg has ended up. So now the sea is blocked up with ice and the daddy penguins have to go further to get food. This means that about 98% of the chicks for this breeding season will die. The colony has 130,000 breeding pairs, say each pair has one penglet, that means out of 130,000 baby penglets 104,000 of them will die from starvation.

I'm very sad.
SMH article
SPACE article

On a positive note though, some research that's been done over the past few years on Antarctic penguins has yielded good results: evidence for microevolution!

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