62,000 Penguins Starved to Death Off South Africa's Coast Last Decade. Here's Why.

A brutal confluence of environmental change and human fishing habits left tens of thousands of adult African penguins off South Africa's coast without enough food to survive, reducing their population by around 95 percent in just eight years, a new study reveals.

"These declines are mirrored elsewhere," says University of Exeter conservation biologist Richard Sherley, adding that the species has "undergone a global population decline of nearly 80 percent in the last 30 years."

Each year, African penguins ( ) spend about 20 days on land to molt their worn-out feathers so they can stay waterproof and insulated.

They usually fatten up in preparation for this fasting period, but between 2004 and 2011, stocks of their main food, sardines, plummeted to about 25 percent of their pea