Then when the babies are born, the adults again take turns guarding and providing food for their young. If the ice melts earlier, the sea algae blooms sooner, the krill arrive earlier to eat the algae and then the fish appear to eat the krill. So if the fish are off schedule, Adelie parents struggle to feed their babies. As the food source shifts, penguin parents spend far too much time at sea looking for it. Chicks starve to death or become an easy meal for predators like the skua, which resembles a large gull.
Scientists look to penguins to gauge the health of our oceans and, in a larger sense, earth.
The fact that many penguin species can no longer sustain their populations suggests a sick planet. Antarctic ice trends have not gone unnoticed by researchers. This so-called Ice Island broke off, or calved, in March of this year. The team, sponsored mainly by Kurtis HD Partners, National Geographic Magazine, New England Aquarium and the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, will spend their time diving, exploring and surveying around this giant iceberg in the Ross Sea. More on this expedition, I'm sure, in a later edition of Seabits.