They survived the hunters: Now king penguins face climate change

A 2018 study that found that global warming was on track to wipe out 70% of the world's king penguins by the end of the century.

Once hunted to the brink of extinction, the thousands of king penguins that densely congregate on the remote Possession Island each year now face a new threat: climate change.

The birds spend most of their life at sea, but come breeding time in December half the world's population flock to the islands in the southern Indian Ocean's Crozet archipelago, roughly halfway between Antarctica and the southeastern tip of Africa.

Robin Cristofari, a specialist in penguins at Finland's University of Turku, looks out on a colony massed at a bay on Possession Island.

"This species was not very far from extinction" after being massacred by seal hunters from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th, he said.

When the hunters ran out of seals to kill, they used the penguins as fuel, burning them to melt seal blubber in cauldrons, said Cristofari.

For a short time they even made penguin oil, "but it was not good quality", he added.

The king penguin population rebounded in the latter half of the 20th century, but their numbers plateaued around 20 years ago.