Penguins are adorable.   And they make great documentary subjects. And they are also important indicators of marine life. In today’s New York Times, biologist P. Dee Boersma explains why climate change is threatening their future:

the dwindling numbers [of penguins] do not just mean the birds are suffering, Dr. Boersma writes. Because penguins are marine sentinels, their decline is a blunt message that their marine environment is in trouble, chiefly from overfishing and pollution from offshore oil operations and shipping.

Magellanic penguins can swim almost 100 miles a day, she said in an e-mail message, but to get enough to eat now they must venture as much as 40 miles farther from their nests than they did a decade ago.

Some of the food shortage is fishing-related, Dr. Boersma said, but some appears to be caused by climate change. As glaciers and sea ice retreat, she writes in her article, even small variations can have major consequences for penguins.

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Related:
A New Twist in Penguins’ Already Uncertain Future

A pair of dancing penguins put in an appearance at the Bali climate change conference yesterday, but theirs was not a case of “Happy Feet,” because the penguins’ breeding ground is literally melting out from under them. Antarctica is warming five times faster, on average, than the rest of the world, according to the World Wildlife Fund, who provided the penguin-costumed protesters.

The purpose of this stunt was to highlight the fact that the Antarctic’s penguin population is just as threatened by global warming as its equally cute “Ëœn’ cuddly Arctic brethren at the other end of the earth, the polar bear. The Empire penguin population has declined by half in recent decades due to thinning ice and overfishing that’s decimated their food supply. Can we halt the erosion of this beloved bird’s habitat before the krill is gone?

To find out what you can do about global warming, check out fightglobalwarming.com.