Changing climate is killing penguin chicks in Argentina

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/changing-climate-killing-penguin-chicks-argentina-2D12018115

Nidhi Subbaraman NBC News
Jan. 29, 2014

Extreme weather along the Argentine coast is killing chicks of Magellanic penguins that roost there. A 28-year study of the birds has found very hot years and very wet ones claiming as many as 50 percent of new chicks in the worst of times.

“Penguin [chicks] don’t do well when they get wet,” said Dee Boersma, a researcher at University of Washington who’s been tracking the birds at the Punta Tombo peninsula, the largest colony of Magellanic penguins, since 1983.

New chicks that encounter a rainstorm before they grow out a waterproof coat get drenched and die of hypothermia, she reports in a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. "If you've ever had a down sleeping bag, and got it wet, all the insulating properties are lost," Boersma explained.

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"We're going to see years where almost no chicks survive if climate change makes storms bigger and more frequent during vulnerable times of the breeding season as climatologists predict," Ginger Rebstock, Boersma’s co-author on the study, said in a release.

"This year we’re not going to have any chicks that will die from rain," Boersma said. "But we’ve had a lot of chicks that die this year from heat, because it’s been hot."

Weather isn’t the only thing threatening the Magellanic penguins; they’re starving as well. In a 2008 study, Boersma showed that decreasing sea ice meant the birds needed to swim up to 40 miles farther to reach their food, she told the New York Times then.

----- [several other penguin species are being hurt by climate change]

As for the Magellanics, there’s a chance humans can help, in ways that don't involve reprogramming the weather. Boersma said protecting Punta Tombo peninsula as a marine preserve would mean the penguins wouldn't have to compete with humans that fish there for food.

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