Warming waters due to climate change and overfishing of industrial fishing have brought the African penguins to the category of endangered species. Their population which was more than a million a hundred years ago now has declined  to less than ten thousand. That is close to or more than %95 according to the research done by Ostrich-Journal Of African Ornithology. 

Endemic to South Africa African penguins, unlike to their cousins living in the coasts of Antarctica, are much smaller in size and feed mainly on sardines. In recent decades the warming of the seas and industrial overfishing have wiped out the sardines the penguins feed on.  The scarcity of food  has led the desperate parents feed their chicks stones which ultimately causes them to die. Rescuers find pebbles inside the stomachs of dying chicks.

Can they be saved from extinction?  

The plight of the penguins feeding stones to their young ones stirred deep emotions and made news all around the world. On April 2025 conservationists from SANCCOB and Bird Life Africa won a big victory in Pretoria  against the fishing industry for  a legal settlement that draws the lines for the no-fishing zones around the six of penguin breeding colonies. Anchovy and sardine fishing will not be permitted for 12 miles around these islands, mainly Robben Island off Cape Town and Bird Island across Port Elizabeth. A court order is expected to formalize more closures around four other colonies.

These measures are big steps for the protection of penguins but may not be enough. Climate change also contributes to the dwindling of the sardine stocks which is a bigger problem to fight against both for the penguins and the conservationists.