In 1900, roughly three million African penguins thrived in South Africa and Namibia. By 2023, only about 32,000 African penguins remain*, a collapse of 98% in just over a century. What happened?
White gold
The trouble began, as so many ecological disasters do, with humans finding something useful and taking too much of it.
In the 1800s, traders discovered that penguin guano was an extraordinarily rich fertilizer. Ships arrived. Humans scraped the land. For generations, penguins had burrowed deep into those guano layers to build their nests. After humans took their “white gold,” African penguins were left without the material (guano) to build shaded nests that protected eggs and chicks from the sun and predators.
Overfishing
While the housing crisis played out on shore, a second disaster was unfolding at sea. Commercial fishing fleets harvested anchovies and sardines without limits. Penguins had to swim farther and for longer to find food, leaving chicks in exposed nests.
Climate change began increasing temperatures on land and in the ocean, shifting fish populations.
Determined researchers
That is where a team of determined researchers decided to build penthouses for the penguins. Coordinated by Kevin Graham, Associate Curator of the Dallas Zoo, and managed by Trudi Malan, of South Africa’s Dyer Island Conservation Trust,
The team tested 15 different nest prototypes on active breeding colonies, each one fitted with high-precision sensors to measure temperature, humidity, and airflow inside to answer the question, what did a good nest actually feel like to a penguin? More than 270,000 data points were run through statistical analysis to determine the best two designs.
Two hundred nests, one hundred of each design, were installed on Bird Island and Dyer Island. On a sunny afternoon when the outside air reads a pleasant 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), the bare ground surrounding a nest can reach 51 degrees Celsius (124 degrees Fahrenheit). Inside the winning ceramic nest design, the temperature remained a comfortable 23 degrees Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit). Humidity inside remained above 70%, giving eggs and chicks the moist, stable environment they needed to thrive.
The winning material was a ceramic-based slurry, shaped to match the interior volume of wild guano nests. The entrance hole was designed to mimic the old burrow openings, so penguins would recognize it as home.
The ultimate test came when African penguins moved in, laid eggs, and successfully raised their chicks inside the ceramic penthouses.
If you break it, you fix it
There’s nothing easy about the research, design, testing, or construction of the artificial penguin nests being installed in the nesting colonies. This challenge includes getting the nests to the nesting colonies, which are typically miles offshore on uninhabited islands. This means either transport by boat or in some cases slung under a helicopter to move thousands of pounds of nests into place.
The story of the African penguin is one of compounded human mistakes. The penguin penthouses project shows what happens when people decide to fix what they broke.
Learn more about the African penguin nest project.
* In 2023, the overall number of pairs was about 9,900 pairs, or 19,800 mature individuals (Sherley et al. 2024). This roughly equates to about 31,680 individuals in adult plumage based on the conversion factor of 3.2 for pairs to individuals (Crawford and Boonstra 1994).
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