Dying penguins

Humans are killing penguins ...

I hate to have to say this but people are still killing my friends in the Antarctic. I don't mean they're deliberately doing it - like they used to in the bad old days of sealing. But they are bringing in diseases and pollution and taking too much of our fish. These things are killing us. And they're killing you too.

Here's some of what's happening:

• Emperor penguin chicks swim much further north than you people realised - until recently. This brings them into conflict with your fishing fleets as they try and vacuum up all our food. I don't just mean Emperor chicks either. A whole web of animals live in the cold stormy Antarctic Ocean - including the great whales. Nobody knows how many penguins die of starvation - or drown by getting tangled in the fishermens' nets like dolphins during tuna fishing [1]. Four years ago, enormous numbers of Adelie penguin chicks died of starvation because their mothers and fathers had to swim further than ever to find food - for the same reason: overfishing by people [2].

   

• I've found out that Adelie penguins living in colonies close to the Australian Antarctic Mawson base are infected with microbes that kill chickens. This is worrying! It must be pollution from the base because there are no chickens in the Antarctic (as I'm sure you knew) [3].

• POP goes the Penguin? Everyone's heard of DDT, the insecticide. This is just one a class of poisons called Persistant Organic Pollutants which don't break down easily. So they spread everywhere so that now, every living creature on the planet (except perhaps in the deep oceans) contains some man-made poisons in its body ... including, of course, penguins [4].

  Penguins, other fishing birds (like albatrosses, terns and gulls) and sea-going mammals like whales and seals are particularly affected. Like meat-eating lions, wolves and some people (the Inuit of the Arctic), they are top of the food chain, eating nothing but fish. This means that the poisons get more concentrated. Levels of a pesticide called toxaphene were 10 times the Canadian limit in Arctic Canadian fish - and the poison isn't even used there. It seems to arrive by a sort of distillation from the warm damp contaminated soils of the tropics. Air currents carry the vapourised POPs and dump them eventually in the coldest parts of the planet [5]. Now that really is not fair!

  (Oh by the way, here's some more info I've found about pesticides. Nasty things.)

Oh dear. My friends, what are we to do? Here's a couple of ideas. Maybe you could send me some others?

• Please rediscover what so many of you've lost - organic farming - which doesn't use poisons.
• And couldn't you keep fish and other meat for special occasions? Then you won't pinch more than your share. After all, people can live without any meat but penguins can't live without fish. Then we all have a chance.

[2] [3] Reported in Science News, 5 July 97, page 11

[4] Reported in New Scientist, 18 Oct 97, 5

[5] Reported in New Scientist, 22 July 95, 7