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Changing landscape

Emperor penguins, which delighted audiences of the Academy Award-winning documentary March of the Penguins, could be sliding on the path toward extinction—the victims of climate change, according to a study by WHOI biologists.  The key threat to the penguins is diminishing sea ice, an essential platform on which the tall, tuxedoed birds breed, feed, and molt. WHOI marine biogeochemist Mak Saito took this image while working in Antarctica in November 2009. Over the past two years, Saito and his colleagues have been studying phytoplankton to better understand how marine ecosystems work and how they might be affected by climate change. (Photo courtesy of Mak Saito, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)