Earth Equity News

Ozone Hole Provides Temporary Reprieve for Adèlie Penguins. By Michael Todd, Miller-McCune, 9/28/10. "It is the best of times, it is the worst of times -- for penguins… Some colonies of Adèlie penguins, those living near Ross Island, are going to be near-term winners of how climate change affects the world's seventh continent. This will occur even as their peers on the Antarctic Peninsula 2,000 miles away face a punishing slog toward probable localized extinction… In the Ross Sea [which is as far south as one can go on the ocean], the hole in the ozone layer creates upper atmosphere cooling, which increases winds, which increases sea ice. [Penguin scientist] Grant Ballard calls it a 'giant ice generator,' and as long as temperatures remain above freezing, it will likely remain one. 'People expect the ice to be going away, and fast, but in the Ross Sea it isn't -- yet. However, we do expect to in 20 years, or it could be 40 years, depending on which models you look at, we expect we'll start seeing a decline in sea ice again, in the Ross Sea.'… Grant Ballard's mentor, the renowned penguin expert David G. Ainley, has dubbed Adèlies the 'bellwether of climate change,' in part because they are completely dependent on the continued existence of sea ice and in part because they have been well studied and so provide a good baseline for observing change.

"Ballard and the other researchers are providing information to a member of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources [PDF, 23 pp], the one organization with the statutory authority to create non-fishing areas off Antarctica. The convention is planning to examine that possibility in the spring. The researchers have also provided information to the nongovernmental organization the Antarctica and South Ocean Coalition, which while it hasn't taken a stand on a marine protected area for the Ross Sea it is clearly pro-conservation, as the video, The Ross Sea, Antarctica, demonstrates. While Ballard isn't taking a public position on what the convention should do, because the Antarctic is pretty much the last accessible place on Earth that hasn't been completely altered by humanity, he is concerned about a potential loss that echoes beyond Adèlie colonies. 'From a scientific perspective, it's a tragedy to lose this place, last reference point.' Ballard laments. 'From a cultural perspective, a human value perspective, I think people can understand it's probably not a good idea to destroy every ecosystem on the planet.'"