DEAD IN THE WATER OP-ED: Silent crisis — starving penguins, dying sardines and a government gambling with species extinction

In March 2025, South Africa appeared finally to have done something decisive for the African penguin.

Following litigation brought by BirdLife South Africa and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob), an agreement was reached, establishing strengthened no-take zones for commercial sardine and anchovy fishing around six of the country’s most important African penguin breeding colonies: Dassen Island, Robben Island, Stony Point, Dyer Island, St Croix Island and Bird Island.

The environment minister at the time, Dion George, proclaimed it a “pivotal moment”. Permit conditions in the small pelagic fishery were amended with immediate effect. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) said the measures would secure more fish for penguins and demonstrate the government’s commitment to preventing the extinction of a species that had, by then, been classified as critically endangered. 

That was the promise. But conservation is not achieved by drawing lines on a map. A fishing exclusion zone is useful only if there are sufficient fish left for the animals it is supposed to protect. And on that measure, the picture in 2026 is considerably less reassuring.

The penguins are telling us something

During the extraordinary sardine mortality event that began on the West Coast in late July and subsequently extended along the southern Cape, into the Eastern Cape and as far as the northern Wild Coast, something disturbing began appearing in African penguin monitoring data. Penguins were losing weight.

At Dyer Island, BirdLife South Africa’s Seabird Conservation Programme manager, Dr Alistair McInnes, reported a “considerable decline” in the average weight of penguins crossing an automated weighbridge. The decline persisted for roughly 10 to 12 days before showing some recovery. At Stony Point, monitoring also detected falling average weights, with some individual birds recording significant declines. Robben Island showed a shorter dip. 

These findings require scientific caution. McInnes himself emphasised that the data were preliminary and that other variables could be involved.

But caution cuts both ways. 

When a critically endangered predator whose decline is already strongly associated with food scarcity begins losing body mass at several breeding colonies at the same time that one of its principal prey species is experiencing an unprecedented mortality event, the precautionary response should not be to continue removing that prey until somebody can prove catastrophe.

It should be to stop. That is precisely what precaution means.

A food supply already under pressure

African penguins do not have the luxury of switching easily to another food economy. Their survival is closely tied to energy-rich small pelagic fish, principally sardine and anchovy and those stocks have already been profoundly unstable.

BirdLife South Africa notes that the country’s African penguin breeding population has almost halved in the past decade. There are now about 8,750 breeding pairs in South Africa, and the global population has fallen to fewer than 20,000 mature individuals. 

This is not simply an abstract population trend. Recent research has reconstructed the consequences of earlier food shortages around the West Coast colonies: tens of thousands of penguins disappeared during periods when sardine availability collapsed.

By April this year the situation was sufficiently serious that international reporting was describing African penguins as starving because of depleted prey availability and the continuing pressure placed upon sardine stocks. 

Sanccob’s own current records tell another, smaller but equally uncomfortable story. Penguins admitted during 2026 include birds described as “emaciated”, “thin” or severely underweight from locations including Cape Recife, Gqeberha, Simon’s Town, Sea Point and Betty’s Bay. A separate penguin rescued at Port Edward arrived weighing just 1.5kg before rehabilitation brought her weight up to 2.7kg. 

Then the sardines began dying

The situation changed dramatically from late July.

Sardines began dying along the South African coast. Reports eventually stretched across a geographic range of about 2,600km, including Namibia, although mortality was not continuous throughout that entire area. Pilchard herpesvirus has subsequently been confirmed in mortality-associated sardines from the Western Cape, Gqeberha area and northern Wild Coast. 

The DFFE itself concedes a crucial point: nobody yet knows exactly how many sardines died.

Fish visible on beaches represent only part of the mortality. An unknown number sank or died offshore. The government therefore cannot yet reliably quantify what proportion of the stock has been lost. 

Scientists consequently called for commercial sardine fishing to be stopped until the extent of the mortality could be established.

The DFFE refused.

Instead, on 11 September, it allowed each commercial right holder to catch up to 25% of its outstanding directed sardine quota until 2 October. Fishing therefore remained legal while the mortality event was still being investigated and before the post-event biomass of the stock was known.

The DFFE confirmed that at least 26 tonnes of sardine had been taken since the beginning of September, with additional fishing apparently constrained partly by weather rather than conservation measures. 

Fishing before knowing what remains

The department’s justification is that available evidence did not indicate that mortality had reduced sardine numbers sufficiently to warrant complete closure. But that reasoning turns the precautionary principle on its head.

The government acknowledges that the magnitude of mortality is uncertain. It acknowledges that an unknown quantity of dead fish may have sunk. It acknowledges that the October/November hydroacoustic survey will provide the first fisheries-independent estimate of sardine biomass and distribution following the mortality event. Yet fishing was allowed to continue before that information existed.

Put differently, the DFFE does not yet know how many sardines remain, but decided that enough remain to continue harvesting them.

For a healthy predator population, that might arguably be regarded as an ordinary fisheries-management gamble. For a species classified as critically endangered and potentially approaching functional extinction, it may be catastrophic.

Protection on paper is not enough

The entire purpose of the court agreement was that penguins were supposed to have greater access to food. The government itself celebrated the closures precisely because restricting fishing around colonies would reduce competition between commercial fleets and hungry penguins. 

Now an unforeseen shock has struck the sardine population, precisely the kind of circumstance in which a genuinely precautionary conservation regime should become more protective, not less.

Instead, fishing continued.

Worse, there is currently a transparency problem. The DFFE’s temporary restriction expired on 2 October. The department said its Small Pelagic Scientific Working Group would meet on 29 September and that the subsequent management decision would be communicated. Yet the DFFE’s latest statement on 4 October discusses the sardine mortality investigation and forthcoming biomass survey without clearly explaining whether the temporary fishing restriction has been extended, replaced or allowed to lapse. 

For a species this close to extinction, that is not a minor administrative omission. We need to know whether commercial fishing is taking place, where it is taking place, how much sardine is being removed and what monitoring the DFFE is conducting around each protected penguin colony.

The penguins cannot wait for certainty

African penguins have already waited while the government convened panels, negotiated boundaries, debated fisheries economics and defended management decisions.

They do not have much time left.

The question before the DFFE now is no longer whether fishing closures around colonies were a worthwhile intervention. That argument has effectively been settled. The question is whether the government is prepared to follow the logic of its own conservation commitment when circumstances become inconvenient.

A critically endangered species has suffered decades of decline principally because the marine ecosystem upon which it depends has been fundamentally altered. Its prey is scarce. Its birds are showing signs of nutritional stress. One of its most important food species has just suffered an extraordinary, poorly quantified mortality event.

And we are still fishing before we even know how many fish are left. The African penguin does not need another declaration of commitment. It needs sardines. 

And the DFFE needs to decide, while there are still penguins left to save, whose claim to those sardines comes first. DM

Dr Adam Cruise is an investigative environmental journalist, travel writer and academic. He has contributed to a number of international publications, including National Geographic and The Guardian, covering diverse topics from the plight of elephants, rhinos and lions in Africa to coral reef rejuvenation in Indonesia. Cruise is a doctor of philosophy, specialising in animal and environmental ethics, and is the editor of the online Journal of African Elephants. He is a Research Fellow at the Unit of Environmental Ethics, Philosophy Department, Stellenbosch University.