Wildlife

Anti-whaling activists fail to find Japan fleet

Anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd says it has not been able to find the Japanese fleet which is hunting whales in the Southern Ocean.

Sea Shepherd sends its boats out every hunting season to try to interfere with the Japanese fleet and protect whales. But it said Japan had "greatly expanded their area of illegal operations" this year, making it hard to find them.

The statement called on Australia and New Zealand to help by passing on the co-ordinates of the fleet.

From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s whale meat was the single biggest source of meat in Japan. At its peak in 1964 Japan killed more than 24,000 whales in one year, most of them enormous fin whales and sperm whales.

Today Japan can afford to import meat from Australia and America. There is no deep-sea commercial whaling in Japan. The fleet that is now hunting in Antarctic waters is paid for by Japanese taxpayers to carry out what the Japanese government describes as "scientific research".

Japan's other justification is that it needs to kill hundreds of whales each year to study them. But the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has systematically dismantled that argument. In 2014 it ruled that there was no scientific case for Japan's programme of "lethal research" in the Southern Ocean, and ordered Tokyo to stop.

Japan resumed its annual whale hunt in the Southern Ocean in December last year, after a one-year break, despite a global moratorium on whaling.

The four-vessel fleet is aiming to catch 333 Antarctic Minke whales - about one-third of previous targets - and Japan says the hunt is for scientific research, which is allowed under the ban.

But activists say the programme is inhumane, unsustainable and illegal.

Missing Antarctic Penguins - Update

The news was previously reported — that some 150,000 Adélie penguins have died in Antarctica because a colossal iceberg cut off their sea access.

But according to other experts, there's no proof yet that the birds are dead. No one has actually found 150,000 frozen penguins. In fact, some experts think there's a less horrific explanation for the missing birds: When the fishing gets tough, penguins simply pick up and move. It wouldn't be the first time Adélie penguins marched to new digs. When an iceberg grounded in the southern Ross Sea in 2001, penguins on Ross Island relocated to nearby colonies until the ice broke up.

While the Adélie population has dropped along the Antarctic Peninsula, the colonies in East Antarctica are growing. As of 2011, there were approximately 7 million Adélie penguins in Antarctica. Losing 150,000 birds — even if that were true — is hardly considered to be apocalyptic, according to the opposing experts.

Wildlife

150,000 Antarctica penguins die after iceberg grounding: study

Some 150,000 penguins died after a massive iceberg grounded near their colony in Antarctica, forcing them to make a lengthy trek to find food, scientists say in a newly-published study.

The B09B iceberg, measuring some 100 square kilometres (38.6 square miles), grounded in Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica in December 2010, the researchers from Australia and New Zealand wrote in the Antarctic Science journal.

The Adelie penguin population at the bay’s Cape Denison was measured to be about 160,000 in February 2011 but by December 2013 it had plunged to an estimated 10,000, they said.

The iceberg’s grounding meant the penguins had to walk more than 60 kilometres (37 miles) to find food, impeding their breeding attempts, said the researchers from the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Climate Change Research Centre and New Zealand’s West Coast Penguin Trust.

During their census in December 2013, the researchers said “hundreds of abandoned eggs were noted, and the ground was littered with the freeze-dried carcasses of previous season’s chicks”.

“The ones that we saw at Cape Denison were incredibly docile, lethargic, almost unaware of your existence.

“The ones that are surviving are clearly struggling. They can barely survive themselves, let alone hatch the next generation. We saw lots of dead birds on the ground… it’s just heartbreaking to see.”

In contrast, penguins living on the eastern fringe of the bay just eight kilometres from the fast ice edge were thriving, the scientists said.

The researchers said the study had “important implications” for the wider East Antarctic if the current trend of increasing sea ice continued.

Sea ice around Antarctica is increasing, in contrast to the Arctic where global warming is causing ice to melt and glaciers to shrink

Wildlife

Six penguins have died in a malaria outbreak in the London Zoo. The birds contracted the avian strain of the disease from mosquitoes.

Climate Change

Scientists report that penguin numbers are plummeting. They attribute this phenomenon to global warming.

The flightless birds depend on krill as their principal source of food. As the Antarctic ice melts, so the supply of krill dwindles.

Chinstrap penguins have seen a 36% drop in numbers. Adelie penguins and emperor penguins have seen similar decline in numbers.