This king penguin colony in South Georgia is thriving. Breeding numbers are increasing annually, making this population one of the biggest in the world. But this seemingly healthy colony may actually be a sign of the poor health of their environment. King penguin numbers have been increasing historically in South Georgia, and there’s a lot more than there was when I was a child. Yeah, the retreated glacier has exposed a lot of habitat, a lot of real estate for many of the animals here. So, since the turn of the last century, it’s possible that the amount of beach space in South Georgia has doubled or more. Several of the largest glaciers here on the north coast have gone back two, three, four kilometres even. You’ve literally got bays that have been created through the retreat of glaciers that aren’t on the map, that didn’t exist before. Climate change could be the driver behind these growing colonies, but it’s still unclear as to whether the king penguins are able to fully adapt to this new environment. Climate warming is going to affect the food sources, the oceans are warming. So, the areas of productivity for food sources for these animals are changing, disappearing or moving further south. It could make a big difference to the distances they have to swim in order to feed their chicks. As our planet continues to warm, ice cover is melting across our polar regions, and it’s having impacts far beyond the local wildlife. We know 100 per cent for a fact that sea level is rising. We can measure it very precisely with satellites. It’s rising about just over 3mm per year right now. We have warming atmosphere, it’s causing more surface melt, which is running off into the ocean. And also ocean warming has actually driven a significant amount of the retreat and acceleration of many of the glaciers that terminate in the oceans. The losses are expected to accelerate and will become the largest contributors to sea level rise. Places like Bangladesh and Florida and, you know, northern Europe, any place that’s low lying is going to be impacted and has already started to see the impacts of sea level rise. It can also be the loss of human lives, it can amplify both the sort of destruction of storms and then also the cost of making repairs. So it behoves us all to really take this sea level rise from the ice sheets actually quite seriously. The health of our planet’s ice sheets has already been damaged, but every step that we take to help them heal really counts. It feels really hard sometimes to think that that how I see the ice right now, in 10, 50, 100 years will look completely different and will likely have a much more negative impact on society if we don’t do something about it. I mean, I think personally I’m just… I-I like to think the best of humans. We need to start making changes in our life. We got used to a certain amount of consumerism and now we have to sort of face the facts that we can’t keep doing this because our planet will suffer. So just self-awareness of the impact of everything that you choose to do in your daily life, I think can make an immeasurable impact on the planet. I think it’s critical to call upon everyone. English (United Kingdom)
