How climate change and fishing pressure are affecting macaroni penguin welfare and population dynamics.
Macaroni penguin welfare is largely determined by prey availability, which is increasingly disrupted by climate change and industrial fishing. During breeding, adults must commute to foraging areas and return with food for chicks — when prey is scarce or distant, chicks receive inadequate nutrition and starve. This represents a mass welfare event repeated annually across breeding colonies when conditions are poor. Adults that cannot find sufficient food also experience nutritional stress themselves. The combination of ocean warming shifting prey distribution and krill fishing removing food from penguin foraging areas creates compounding welfare pressure that population numbers alone do not capture.