Penguin Colony Crashes 63 Percent: 680,000 Chinstraps Lost Since 2011
A team led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) found that chinstrap numbers on Zavodovski Island, part of the South Sandwich Islands, dropped 63% between 2011 and 2025. The breeding population shrank from roughly 1.09 million to about 402,000, a loss of more than 680,000 birds.
Scientists built the count from drone surveys, aerial photography and satellite data, along with tracking devices attached to the penguins.
The evidence points to a food crisis driven by climate-related shifts in the Southern Ocean. These changes have affected the supply of Antarctic krill, the chinstrap’s principal food.
“Our tracking data shows they prefer to forage in cooler waters to the northwest of the island, where they would expect to find Antarctic krill – the prey that make up the bulk of their diet,” said Norman Ratcliffe, a penguin ecologist at BAS who led the research.
The results heighten fears for chinstrap penguins across the wider South Sandwich Islands, which hold a significant share of the species’ global population.
Researchers said the size and speed of the losses could justify a fresh look at the species’ conservation status. The International Union for Conservation of Nature currently lists the chinstrap penguin as “Least Concern”.
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