The penguins of this small island aren’t going extinct

So why is everyone so upset?

It’s been almost two years since I wrote an article on this, back in university. It was only for my teacher to read, an assignment for a Narrative Non Fiction class. I had my notebook in hand, my Facebook enquiries on file, and my ticket on my phone.

The ferry was small, more like a metal rectangle with a roof and a motor welded on the back. I imagined that in the summer, you would see the salt dried on the mats beneath your feet, but it was winter and they were still wet at that moment. Soggy beneath my shoes. The coolness of the bench beneath my jeans was seeping through and I was eager for the trip to be over. How did anyone manage to swim out to the island? It must have been quite the workout, if you were to risk it.

Penguin Island, named after the appropriately named “Little Penguins” who inhabit it, is a small place. It’s big enough you can walk the entirety of it in about thirty minutes, if you meander. The majority of it is covered in thick beach vegetation, which you step over in raised boardwalks. The beaches that do exist are small and lodged with limestone chunks, or even the small cave someone supposedly decided to live in years and years ago.

It’s a common activity for Rockingham locals or visitors from Perth CBD to take the ferry over, then walk up and down the island searching for wild Little Penguins. You’ll find seagulls creating a snow-like canopy on the vegetation, or pelicans propped on limestone rocks, enjoying the cool beach wind. There are Australian Sea Lions baking on the sand, their lightly toasted bellies exposed to allow for all the better relaxation. What you won’t find, eyes scanning the vegetation or the beaches, is the Little Penguin.

Local news had already reported on their disappearance. A week after my visit, federal news would report on it too, bringing the news across the country.

On that cold morning, I stopped several volunteers, mostly older community members who directed visitors in their blue polo shirts. I knocked on the metal door of the rangers office. I spoke to anyone I could find who might be an expert on the island, and its dwindling inhabitants.

“We can’t speak to media,” they told me. “We’ve been told not to speak to media.”

“But I’m not media,” I’d tried insisting. Somehow, the very people so passionate about the penguins, the people who gathered the data and studied them, had become the enemy. It was their fault the penguins were dying, somehow. Allowing tourists to the island, near the island, fishing and other things all caused the penguins to die off.

A Facebook Group, aptly named “Save the Penguins”, argued that the visits to the island from the public had to end. Construction on the island had to end. A visitors centre could be built on the nearby Point Peron instead. We had to leave the penguins alone. The Guardian and ABC Perth reported on this, on the numbers falling from 400 and lower. Chicks weren’t surviving. Penguin Island would no longer be Penguin Island, at some point in the near future.

Tourism to the island was paused. Construction ended. The island seemingly came to a stop.

Only, Little Penguins as a species aren’t going extinct. The conservation status of the bird is “Least concern”, and there are thriving populations all over the south of Australia, including more famous areas such as Phillip Island, or the island only 6 kilometres away, Garden Island.

So why are the penguins of Penguin Island dying off? The population has dipped by 94% since 2007, according to some sources, with current estimations of only about 120 penguins remaining. Is it really just the boat traffic and the construction, if the penguins on Garden Island are so unaffected? Should the Garden Island’s colony not be affected by the constant movement of the Naval force occupying the island? Or the boat movement as they operate through the same areas?

The difference lies largely in the feeding preferences. Little Penguins feed on small fish, squid and crustaceans, diving about 10 to 30 metres underwater to hunt under daylight. They usually don’t travel more than 20 kilometres from their home to hunt, and the Garden Island Little Penguins are known to do this feeding in the Cockburn Sound, preferring a breed of fish that resides there.

Penguin Island’s Little Penguins are known to feed on a different variety of small fish, the Sandy Sprat, but following a heatwave in 2011 and continued warming sea temperatures in the years after, this fish was replaced by Scaly Mackerel, a tropical fish. With their primary food source scarce, the Penguin Island colony have been forced to swim further in order to find enough food, often leaving them unable to feed their young. A large cause of the decline of the Penguin Island colony has been due to starvation, alongside some parasite infections possibly also caused by the switch of food source.

The Penguin Island penguins aren’t the only ones. Studies showed that a significant decline in Little Penguin populations on Phillip Island and some Victorian populations was the result of a fall in the population of pilchard fish, their preferred diet. Though this occurred in 1995, it demonstrates how individual each colony can be from one another. Scientists have seen colonies from three neighbouring islands act and adapt in completely different ways depending entirely on environmental factors, including the water temperature.

“When foraging, marine predators need to respond to environmental conditions in order to locate their preferred food,” stated an article by the University of Tasmania. “As conditions change in highly variable and complex environments such as Storm Bay so too do the locations where Little Penguins can find food.”

The penguins of Phillip Island are known to rely on the fish within the Bass Strait, leaving them reliant on the population of fish in that area. Currently, this population remains stable, like the type of fish the Garden Island penguins feed on in the Cockburn sound.

So, the main cause of mortality for the Little Penguin proves to be starvation as a result of climate change. That, and boat hits, for the Perth populations. But the Little Penguin species is not at risk of extinction, as a whole, so while this is sad, why does it matter? What more can be done? Shouldn’t we be paying more attention to some other species, one that’s actually at risk of disappearing forever?

There are a few reasons.

Most simply, the Little Penguins of Penguin Island are a key part of Rockingham’s community identity. Word of mouth carries stories of the penguins diving under the jetty in the early hours of the morning, when the sky is still pink and the street lights still hum white. There is even a swimming group known as the Rockingham Penguins who swim at 6am, every morning. The penguins are small, cute creatures who are easy to love and not so easy to lose.

Scientifically, the Little Penguins are also an “indicator species”, according to Dr Belinda Cannell, local expert. This means that any changes in the population numbers, breeding habits, overall health and foraging behaviours can act as a signal to shifts in ecosystem health. As the Rockingham coast hosts a number of other creatures worth watching, including the endangered Australian Sea Lion, having these indicators of the health of the environment is more important than ever.

Not to mention, the Little Penguin population is in a general decline across Australia. Like Penguin Island, there are other islands such as Barunguba/Montague Island and the Bowen Islands that are experiencing a more drastic decline in their colonies, also due to lack of access to preferred fish, as well as other impacts like habitat degradation from erosion and threats of introduced species like foxes, dogs and cats. While they are not considered at risk as a species, the feeding preferences in combination with these other risks leaves them particularly affected by climate change.

When it comes to ensuring the long term survival of Little Penguins, processes such as breeding boxes and reducing footfall in their areas are only short term, bandaid-style solutions. You can address some of the causes of penguin mortality, but it will not prevent them from starving to death.

The effect of climate change on Little Penguin mortality has largely been left off many articles speaking on the decline on Penguin Island, along with many call-to-actions from local activists. The reason, perhaps, lies in that climate change being a main cause leaves many hopeless. How is anyone supposed to fight something like that? It’s been years since climate change became public knowledge, and yet, almost all fights for action arrive from individuals. Australian laws regarding methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have been small. Governments have acted like their hands are tied, like this is all they can do. What more can be done?

The alternative, though, is that the Little Penguins will go extinct. Eventually. Currently, we’re waiting around for the breaking point, when the waters will get just a bit too hot and drive out crucial primary fish, when the ocean will rise and erode away crucial breeding grounds, when breeding times will shift and fewer chicks will hatch. And by then, we might be too late for those remaining wild colonies.

If we truly do care about the Little Penguins, and any other marine animal for that matter, we need to start now. I don’t need to tell you what we can do to stop or slow climate change, we know what we need to do, at this point, but we can’t keep ignoring the key factor in Little Penguin population decline just because it seems too big.