Penguins as Marine Sentinels

Watch Professor Dee Boersma give a short introduction to her Oppenheim Lecture, Penguins as Marine Sentinels, held April 15, 2009.

Professor Boersma discussed why the penguin populations in the world’s temperate southern oceans are declining, and how human-driven factors, such as global warming, oceanwide oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development that are contributing to this decline. These temperate penguin species are now “marine sentinels” for the planet’s southern oceans. The effects on Magellanic penguin populations in the Punta Tombo, Argentina colony that Dr. Boersma studies reveal the consequences of these overarching environmental threats on the oceans as a whole.