Endangered
Northern rockhopper penguin
Eudyptes moseleyi
The northern rockhopper penguin, also known as Moseley's rockhopper penguin, Moseley's penguin, or Tristan penguin, is a penguin species native to the southern Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
The bird
Northern rockhopper penguin is a bird in the family Spheniscidae (order Sphenisciformes) — Eudyptes moseleyi.
Range and habitat
More than 99% of northern rockhoppers breed during late spring or early summer on Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island in the south Atlantic Ocean. Breeding colonies are also found on the French Southern and Antarctic Lands of Amsterdam Island and St Paul Island. It is very rare for the bird to make landfall on the Australian continent, but in 2006, a northern rockhopper was sighted at Robe, South Australia, and in July 2023 a very underweight northern rockhopper was found at Goolwa beach in South Australia.
The current population is estimated to be between 100,000–499,999 breeding pairs at Gough Island, 18,000 to 27,000 pairs at Inaccessible Island, and 3,200 to 4,500 at Tristan da Cunha. In the Indian Ocean, the population was 25,500 pairs on Amsterdam Island, and 9,000 pairs on St Paul Island in 1993. There has been no information available on population trends there since the 1990s.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
It breeds in colonies in a range of locations from sea level or on cliff sides, to sometimes inland. The adults feed their chicks lower trophic level prey than they themselves consume.
During breeding season the adults eat zooplankton and then transition to fish, showing they favor future reproduction.
In crisis
A study published in 2009 showed that the population of the northern rockhopper had declined by 90% since the 1950s. For this reason, the northern rockhopper penguin is classified as endangered. Atlantic Ocean sites show a decline of 2.7% per year. The drop in the population at Gough Island has been described as equivalent to the loss of 100 birds every day since the 1950s.
A study published in 2009 showed that the world population of the northern rockhopper had declined by 90% since the 1950s, possibly because of climate change, changes in marine ecosystems and overfishing for squid and octopus by humans. The northern rockhopper penguin is classified as endangered because of the decline in numbers over the last three generations (or 30 years). 2011 oil spill On March 16, 2011, the Maltese-registered freighter MS Oliva ran aground on Nightingale Island, spilling tons of heavy crude into the ocean.
Northern rockhopper penguin is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Northern rockhopper penguin, Wikidata item Q1274339. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
