It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, November 17, 2025
Species in crisis: critically endangered penguins are directly competing with fishing boats
A new study led by the University of St Andrews, has found that Critically Endangered African penguins are significantly more likely to forage in the same areas as commercial fishing vessels during years of low fish abundance
A new study led by the University of St Andrews, has found that Critically Endangered African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) are significantly more likely to forage in the same areas as commercial fishing vessels during years of low fish abundance, increasing competition for food and adding pressure to a species already in crisis.
Published today (17 November) in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the research introduces a novel metric called “overlap intensity” which for the first time, measures not just the extent of shared space between penguins and fishing vessels, but how many penguins are actually affected by this overlap.
The African penguin population has plummeted by nearly 80% in the past three decades, in part due to competition with the local fishery targeting sardines and anchovies a key prey for the penguins.
The local fishery is purse-seine, a large fishing net used to catch schooling fish by surrounding them.
Lead author of the study Dr Jacqueline Glencross from the Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St Andrews, said: “We wanted a better way to assess how many penguins are potentially impacted when fisheries operate nearby — not just where the overlap occurs,”
Using tracking data from penguins on Robben and Dassen Island, the team, which included researchers from the University of Exeter, the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and BirdLife South Africa, found a sharp increase in overlap during food-scarce years. In 2016, a low fish biomass year, around 20% of penguins were foraging in the same areas as active fishing vessels. In contrast, during years with healthier fish stocks, overlap fell to just 4%.
These findings suggest that fishery-penguin competition can intensify when prey is scarce, posing the greatest risk during sensitive periods like chick-rearing, when adult penguins must forage efficiently to feed their young.
By quantifying overlap intensity at the population level, the study provides a powerful new tool to evaluate ecological risks and inform ecosystem-based fishery management. It also has practical implications for the design of dynamic marine protected areas that can respond to real-time changes in predator-prey dynamics.
The African penguin recently made headlines in a landmark South African court case, which challenged the lack of biologically meaningful fishery closures near penguin breeding colonies.
Earlier this year, the conservation and fishing industry sectors reached a high court settlement over the need for fishery closures near penguin colonies. In response, the South African government has reinstated a more biologically meaningful no-fishing zones around Robben Island, one of the key colonies studied.
Dr Glencross, added: “This research highlights why those closures are necessary. Previously unprotected areas with high overlap intensity are where the penguins were most at risk.”
With an increasing intensity and severity of heat waves in the U.S., Rutgers Health researchers, in collaboration with the City University of New York (CUNY), found that older workers, particularly Black, Latino and low-income individuals, face an increased risk of work disability because of exposure to extreme heat.
Theirstudy, published in the journal Generations, explores how heat-sensitive occupations contribute to health-related work limitations among adults aged 50 and older.
Using nationally representative data, the researchers found that workers in outdoor jobs, such as agriculture or construction, or poorly climate-controlled indoor jobs, are more likely to report that health issues limit their ability to work. These occupations are disproportionately held by men, immigrants, and individuals with low socioeconomic status, who are also more likely to have comorbidities, such as obesity or diabetes.
“Extreme heat is not just an environmental issue, it’s a health and workforce issue,” said Mara Getz Sheftel, an instructor at the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and the lead author of the study. “Our findings show that marginalized populations are more likely to be exposed to heat on the job and to suffer long-term health consequences.”
The study also highlights disparities in access to workplace protections and health care. Workers in informal or temporary jobs, such as delivery drivers or street vendors, often lack employer-sponsored health insurance and may be excluded from heat-related safety regulations.
While some states and cities have implemented local regulations around occupational exposures, the study authors call for stronger federal and local policies to protect workers from extreme heat. Proposed rules from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would require employers to provide water, rest breaks and heat illness prevention plans, but these regulations have yet to be enacted.
“Without comprehensive protections, we risk leaving behind the workers who are most vulnerable to heat-related health impacts,” said Sheftel, who is also an instructor in the Department of Health, Behavior, Society and Policy at the Rutgers School of Public Health.
The researchers said policymakers should consider preventive measures, such as workplace safeguards and increased access to disability funding and health insurance, as well as vocational training for workers who can no longer perform jobs exposed to heat.
Coauthors of the study include Jennifer Brite of Hunter College and Na Yin and Deborah Balk of Baruch College, who are all faculty at the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research.
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Burn Out Reimagined: Extreme Heat, Work Disability, and Sociodemographic Disparities in America
California beach widths show resilience
San Diego County beaches gained width in the past year and average beach width across all of California has remained stable since 1985
A drone carrying a LiDAR system conducting a survey for the annual San Diego County Beach Report. The surveys measure changes in the coastline due to erosion or sand accumulation.
Two new studies from researchers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography provide encouraging news about California's beaches at both local and statewide scales.
The 2025 San Diego County Beach Report found most beaches in the region grew in width last year as beaches entered a post-El Niño recovery phase, while a companion study published in Nature Communications discovered that California's average beach width has remained remarkably stable across nearly four decades despite notable examples of beach erosion.
San Diego County Beach Report 2025
The San Diego County Beach Report is a monitoring effort conducted by the Scripps Coastal Processes Group and funded by California State Parks that tracks beach erosion or expansion in the region. The report encompasses nine San Diego County beaches: Carlsbad State Beach, South Carlsbad State Beach, Leucadia State Beach, Moonlight State Beach, San Elijo State Beach, Cardiff State Beach, Torrey Pines State Beach, Silver Strand State Beach and Border Field State Park. Some of these beaches have been continuously monitored for more than 20 years.
“Tracking beach width is important because beaches are our first defense against flooding on our coastline,” said Adam Young, a coastal geomorphologist at Scripps who co-authored the report. “Healthy beaches are also very important for recreation, cultural and economic reasons.”
To create the beach report, researchers collect 3D measurements of the nine beaches at least once a month using a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanner attached to either a truck, ATV or drone. LiDAR works by firing a laser thousands of times per second and measuring the time it takes for the beams to bounce off objects and return to the sensor. The mobile LiDAR instrumentation used in this study was purchased using Community Project Funding supported by U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49). This year’s beach report features measurements taken between Oct 1, 2024 to Sep 30, 2025.
Managers at California State Parks use the beach report data to track beach health.
“Being able to look across multiple years of the beach report lets managers assess trends, which can help inform decisions about potential beach nourishment projects,” said Mark Merrifield, one of the study’s co-authors and director of the Scripps Center For Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation. “On the flip side, our research also establishes that multi-year cycles of widening or narrowing beaches are not unusual. Multiple years of beach recovery often occur after a strong erosion year.”
California beaches usually lose width during El Niño years, because the larger, more powerful waves associated with El Niño years in California rip sand from beaches and carry it offshore. The intervening years between El Niños are usually times when beaches recover some of that lost width.
So, the 2025 San Diego County Beach Report’s finding that most beaches gained width last year is the start of what researchers expect to be a recovery period.
“The good news is that we are now officially in the beach recovery phase post-El Niño,” said William O’Reilly, an oceanographer at Scripps and the report’s lead author. “That said, the last recovery phase didn’t go too well, so we need to wait and see if beaches continue to recover or if it will be spoiled by increased atmospheric river activity or other extreme weather events.”
The last expected recovery period between the El Niños of 2016 and 2024 resulted in most San Diego beaches losing width each year following the 2016 El Niño through the end of the 2023-2024 winter. This happened because several of the winters during this time frame produced strong waves despite not being El Niño years — including the atmospheric rivers of the 2022-2023 winter and an extreme wave event in 2021.
The 2023-2024 El Niño ended up not sending a lot of wave energy to the U.S. West Coast and researchers hope San Diego beaches will continue to add width for the next three to five years until the next expected El Niño.
The report’s authors also said some of the recent increase in beach width measured by the researchers was due to beach nourishment projects in Encinitas and Solana Beach. The sand added for each of those projects has been generally migrating south.
Researchers say there isn’t yet a clear signal of increased or decreased beach erosion in San Diego County that might be attributable to higher global average temperatures. However, the report’s authors said such a trend might emerge if accurate records of beach widths extended farther back in time.
Statewide stability
This absence of a clear trend at the local level was also echoed by a statewide study, funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California State Parks and the Office of Naval Research, that was also led by O’Reilly. The study found the average beach width for the state of California had remained roughly the same across nearly four decades. Researchers used images collected by the NASA and United States Geological Survey’s Landsat satellites to track changes in beach width across the entire state of California from 1985 to 2021. To do this the team used a software toolkit called CoastSat that detects changes in shoreline position, defined as where the ocean meets dry sand, for sand or gravel coastlines in satellite imagery. The study excluded rocky coasts, ocean cliffs or other places without beaches.
The findings were a surprise to the research team because of the well-documented reduction in sediment supplied by California’s rivers, many of which have been dammed or diverted, and because of specific beaches that have shown long-term narrowing trends.
“Among California’s beaches there have been winners and losers over the past 40 years or so, but across the whole state those wins and losses seem to even out,” said O’Reilly. “Some places are experiencing significant erosion and likely will continue to, but there are other nearby places gaining sand. The deck is being reshuffled and redistributed a bit along the California coastline, and we don’t yet fully understand what’s driving that reshuffling.”
Some of the “winners” include the south end of the beach at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, Venice Beach in Los Angeles and the north end of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Beaches losing sand include places such as Oceanside and San Clemente.
While future sea-level rise is likely to complicate this picture even further, O’Reilly said the unexpected findings were encouraging.
“Our beaches showed more natural resilience than we were expecting,” he said. “Even after a strong El Niño year, our jetski surveys in San Diego show the majority of the sand hasn’t left the system. Sometimes the sand is parked a quarter mile offshore, but it can make its way back after three or four years with the right conditions.”
Together, these two pieces of research provide immediate and long-term perspectives on California's coastal resilience. The San Diego County Beach Report tracks local changes essential for management decisions, while the statewide analysis reveals surprising stability. The findings of each study show how dynamic California’s beaches are, and provide precious information that can help managers and policymakers better understand coastal erosion.
In addition to O’Reilly, Merrifield and Young, Michele Okihiro, Mele Johnson, Brian Woodward, Jon Curtis and Lucian Parry of Scripps co-authored the 2025 San Diego County Beach Report.
Additional co-authors for the Nature Communications study include Dayeon Yoon, Holden Leslie-Bole and Robert Guza of Scripps as well as Laura Cagigal of Universidad de Cantabria, Susheel Adusumilli of the University of Oregon and Kilian Vos of OHB Digital Services.
A truck equipped with a LiDAR system conducting a survey for the annual San Diego County Beach Report. The surveys measure changes in the coastline due to erosion or sand accumulation. Credit: Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego.
