Critically Endangered Penguins Are Now Competing With Fishing Boats for Food as New Threat Looms

The cool, sandy dune-dotted shorelines of South Africa are where African penguins arrive at the sea to grab some fish for their families. They huddle along the shorelines, contracting and expanding their chests. Every morning, they venture out of their home nests to forage for stocks of fish. Back in their homes, their partners and kids await them to return in the evening with mouths full of schooling fish, praying that they escaped the eyes of predators like sharks and seals that patrol the coastlines. Sadly, however, humans there are hunting for the same food as these penguins.

Fish, as it turns out, has provoked a cutthroat competition among penguins and humans, prompting penguins to shift their hunting areas. In a study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, researchers reveal that African penguins are now observed prowling around the fishing boats to win this fierce battle for food, and ultimately survival.

When people think of Africa, what immediately comes to mind is usually the lions, the elephants, the diamonds and gold, the desertscapes, wild volcanoes, the Great Pyramids, and the Nile’s crocodiles. What remains unseen is the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus). Fondly nicknamed “jackass penguins” and “Charlie Chaplins of Africa’s bird world,” due to their characteristic “donkey’s bray”-like calls, these penguins usually have a daily menu that includes small schooling fish like sardines, anchovies, and sometimes squid. Unfortunately, these are the very items local humans like to include in their seafood platter. This has triggered a ferocious competition between these penguins and the human dwellers.

The competition, researchers named “overlap intensity,” is putting a weighty pressure on the penguins, leading them to forage around fishermen’s vessels and fishing boats. But this is not enough. The competition has caused a perturbing decline in the penguin population graph. 80 percent to be precise. It is not just this research. There is other evidence of disappearing penguins. In a video, YouTuber @ForrestGalante shared that the penguin population in Cape Town has dwindled from 4 million to an alarming 40,000.

To make matters worse, the area seems to be experiencing the nastiest environmental shifts it has ever seen. In regions across the southwestern coast of Africa, the low-biomass territories have led the penguin population to enter the zone of “critically endangered.” Plus, thanks to human activity, the population continues to shrink. According to the researchers, these penguins are the “first in the world” to be declared critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2024. It is even estimated that they could go entirely extinct by 2035.

Dr. Jacqueline Glencross, lead study author from the Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St Andrews, shared in a university press release that their goal was to figure out the best way they thought to assess how many penguins were potentially impacted when the fisheries are overtaken by humans. To do this, they gathered the tracking data from penguins on Robben and Dassen islands in South Africa. The results showed a sharp rise in overlap during food-scarce years, such as in 2016, when as many as 20 per cent of penguins were foraging in the same areas as active fishing boats.

Even in areas where there was high biomass, the number dipped to just 4 per cent of penguins. The point to be noted was that the dip was still there despite the high biomass. To resolve the lingering threat to these flightless birds, the government of South Africa has initiated a “more biologically meaningful no-fishing zone.” These closures, Glencross said, are necessary so the previously unprotected areas with high overlap intensity can be managed better, so these innocent penguins can share the win-win in this feral battle of survival.