A fleet of Japanese ships is currently hunting minke whales in the Southern Ocean. It is a politically incendiary practice: the waters around Antarctica were long ago declared a whale sanctuary, but the designation has not halted Japan’s whalers, who are continuing a tradition of catching whales “for scientific research” in the region. In the […]
Tag: Antarctic
Penguin disaster as only two chicks survive from colony of 40,000
A colony of about 40,000 Adélie penguins in Antarctica has suffered a “catastrophic breeding event” – all but two chicks have died of starvation this year. It is the second time in just four years that such devastation – not previously seen in more than 50 years of observation – has been wrought on the […]
POLL: Should Japan be sanctioned for slaughtering Minke whales?
A Japanese whaling fleet returned to port on Friday after an annual Antarctic hunt that killed more than 300 of the mammals, as Tokyo pursues the programme in defiance of global criticism. The fleet set sail for the Southern Ocean in November, with plans to slaughter 333 minke whales, flouting a worldwide moratorium and opposition […]
Why Crested Penguins always lay doomed eggs
With their elaborate yellow eyebrows, crested penguins are both unmistakable and slightly clownish. But to see the strangest part of these birds, such as the macaroni and rockhopper penguins, you shouldn’t look to their comical plumes. Instead, you need to watch what happens when they lay their eggs. They produce two in any given breeding […]
Huge penguin colony at risk from erupting volcano
One of the world’s biggest colonies of penguins is at risk from a volcano that has erupted on their small sub-Antarctic island in a British overseas territory. British scientists fear that Mt Curry’s eruption could have a serious impact on the 1.2m chinstrap penguins and nearly 200,000 macaroni penguins based on Zavodovski, one of the […]