Every year, thousands of king penguins flock to Mariners' Bay, on Possession Island in Crozet.
The animals meet for the breeding season on this territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF), in the Indian Ocean.
The species is recognizable by its white and black feathers with a hint of yellow.
Between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the species was massacred by seal hunters who used their blubber as fuel.
If its population has since increased again, it is now threatened by global warming.
A reproduction linked to the “polar front”
"The species has not gone very far from extinction" and faces a new danger, testifies Robin Cristofari, Finnish manchologist.
The king penguin spends its life at sea and only comes back to land to lay eggs.
It needs a dry place but at a reasonable distance from the polar front, where it will feed on plankton and fish.
The polar front, where the warm and cold waters of the Indian Ocean meet, is found in January 350 km south of Crozet.
In the hottest years, it can be up to 750 km away, too far to feed and return in time to take over from the partner and feed the chick.
"The success of reproduction is indexed to the distance from the polar front", summarizes Robin Cristofari.
🐧 King penguins on Possession Island, one of the Crozet Islands belonging to the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, in the Indian Ocean
📸 @patrickhertzog1#AFP pic.twitter.com/u31k7Nhx0F
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) December 22, 2022
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A reproductive cycle disrupted by heat
With climate change, the polar front is drifting south.
Eventually, Crozet could become uninhabitable for king penguins, which will have to move to other islands further south.
Of more than a million pairs in the world, 500,000 mate on the Crozet Islands and 300,000 on the Kerguelen Islands, 1,400 km further east.
Specialists are not worried about the species in the short term but about its way of life.
A penguin, which lives for around 25 years, does not have its first chick until around 6 or 7 years old.
Males and females share the work 50-50 and pass the hatching egg to each other.
In a classic cycle, they arrive in early November in Crozet, meet and mate.
The female will lay and give her egg to the male and go to sea to feed.
During the 50 days of incubation, they do “alternate guarding” then, after hatching, they leave the baby alone to go and feed.
The chicks are well fed until May and then fast during the austral winter.
The parents come to feed them from time to time but will only start feeding them again when spring returns.
"The cycle is set so that it is easiest for the chick to start feeding on its own, ideally during the peak of summer", explains the manchologist.
It is this entire process that could thus be disrupted by global warming.
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