Penguin diet changed when humans arrived

Around 200 years ago, a group of Antarctic penguins switched from eating mostly big fish to a diet of tiny crustaceans. And new research suggests humans might have forced the change.

Associate Professor Steven Emslie from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Professor William Patterson from the University of Saskatchewan publish their findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers analysed more than 220 fossilised penguin eggshells from 100 to 38,000 years old.

They collected the shells from abandoned Adélie penguin colony sites from three major regions in Antarctica: the Ross Sea, East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula.

After crushing bits of the shells with a mortar and pestle, the scientists measured the ratio of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes to determine past and present penguin diets.

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Southern Ocean carbon sink filling up fast

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The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists report.

Human activity is the main culprit, says researcher Dr Corinne Le Quéré, who calls the finding very alarming.The phenomenon wasn't expected to be apparent for decades, says Le Quere, from the UK's University of East Anglia. "We thought we would be able to detect this only in the second half of this century, say 2050 or so," she says.



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Antarctic reveals treasure trove of life

Carnivorous sponges, 585 new species of crustaceans and hundreds of new worms have been discovered in the dark waters around Antarctica, suggesting these depths may have been the source of much marine life, European researchers report.




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