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This was the largest colony of king penguins in the world, with two million specimens congregating in a small island in the southern Indian Ocean. But in three decades, something happened that decimated the population, leaving only 200,000 survivors. A collapse of 90% that researchers do not find difficult to define "a mystery".
Researchers at the Center for Biological Studies in Chize, France, are the ones who launch the alarm. In an article published in the journal Antarctic Science, experts shine the spotlight on the island of Pigs ("the island of pigs") in the subarctic archipelago Crozet Islands, southern part of the territories French.
AFP
Isolated and inaccessible, this point in the southern hemisphere was last reached by scientists in 1982 The satellite images, as well as some photos taken from a helicopter, are the only tool to know the current situation of the area, which surprised the biologists.
Where before there were penguins, now we see a vegetation that reappropriates the land. For the Center's experts, part of the French Cnrs and the University of La Rochelle, the decline began in the late 1990s and coincided with a very intense Nino event, the periodic phenomenon that warms the waters ocean.
EPA
The penguin eater fish – that is a hypothesis – may have moved south of Antarctica looking for colder waters, reducing the availability of food. Another cause could be overpopulation of the island, which has increased competition between specimens. Finally, a hypothesis is emitted, for example the bird cholera that currently affects penguins on the nearby island of Marion.
But pending the expedition that will begin soon, no hypothesis – I conclude the scholars – does presently seem to offer a satisfactory explanation for a collapse of this magnitude (
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