Crashing sardine stocks off the coast of southern Africa have pushed penguins to the brink, starving tens of thousands to death. In an especially devastating eight-year stretch, up to 62,000 breeding birds perished – nearly 95 percent of the population. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The findings come from new research that looks at how African penguins ( Spheniscus demersus ) were impacted by the sudden nosedive of sardine numbers along the coast of West Africa between 2004–2011.

The sudden sardine collapse was driven by a combination of environmental shifts and human activity. Ocean warming and changes in salinity made the West Coast spawning grounds far less productive, pushing sardines to spawn farther south, wh

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