Wild Ocean Blue

When it comes to measuring the benefits of marine reserves (or Marine Protected Areas aka MPAs, or marine parks, or no take zones, or whatever you want to call them) it’s usually fish populations or marine habitats that we focus on. Now it seems that protecting areas of the sea from fishing pressure can very quickly help ocean predators – including penguins.

African penguins. Photo by ClifB

A new study from South Africa reveals that when a 20km stretch of ocean – not a lot really – was declared off-limits to fishing fleets, a local colony of African penguins spent on average 30% less time out fishing for themselves. Within 3 months of the fishing ban, the penguins found more to eat inside the protected area now that the human hunters weren’t competing for fish.

Spending less time hunting for their dinner is good news for penguins because it cuts down their exposure to other ocean predators that are partial to a penguin-dinner including great white sharks, orcas and cape fur seals.

African penguins. Photo by Paul Mannix

At the same time, another penguin colony 50km away weren’t so lucky. With no protection of their local fish stocks, they had to spend longer in the sea finding enough food for themselves and their youngsters.

African penguins are considered to be vulnerable to extinction, so it’s certainly very encouraging that they can benefit so rapidly from the careful siting of relatively small marine reserves.

Hopefully more reserves like this will be created to help secure the penguins’ future.

In detail:

• African penguins, also known as the black-footed penguin live on the SW coast of Africa.
• They are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Redlist.
• Population declines are mainly blamed on overfishing of their target prey including sardines and anchovies by purse-seine fleets.
• In 2000, a catastrophic oil spill affected nearly half the entire population of African penguins and spawned the world’s largest sea bird rescue operation.
• The paper by Pichegru et al is published in the journal Biology Letters.