The record low 2022 Antarctic sea ice in the central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea sparked the first recorded incident of wide-spread breeding failures amongst the area’s emperor penguin population, says new research published Thursday. Importance of ice habitatThe emperor penguin relies on sea ice for every stage of its life cycle. Land fast ice, ice that is attached to land, or to the bottom of the ocean, is the bird’s platform for reaching feeding grounds, and required for its breeding and molting periods. But Antarctica is increasingly experiencing extreme events including the 2022 heatwave in East Antarctica and the lowest Antarctic sea ice extent recorded on February 25, 2022. “This paper dramatically reveals the connection between sea ice loss and ecosystem annihilation,” Jeremy Wilkinson, a sea ice physicist at British Antarctic Survey, said.
