African penguin facts

Quick facts

How many African penguins are left?

About 9,900 breeding pairs, or 19,800 breeding adults, were left in the wild in 2023, the latest published count: about 8,750 pairs in South Africa and 1,200 in Namibia. BirdLife International puts the total number of African penguins in the wild at fewer than 32,000.

The numbers have been falling for a century. In the early 1900s there were an estimated 1.5 to 3 million African penguins, and SANCCOB, a South African seabird rescue charity, says 97% of the population has now been lost. The counts of breeding pairs show how fast it has gone:

That's 93% fewer pairs than in 1956, and 44% fewer than in 2019, just four years earlier. The IUCN found that the decline is speeding up, and it estimates that over the three penguin generations from 2001 to 2031 (30 years), numbers will have fallen by more than 80%.

There is some good news at single colonies. In June 2026 the yearly count at Boulders Beach in Simon's Town found 790 breeding pairs, up from 698 in 2025 but still below the 845 counted there in 2023. SANParks, which runs the count, warns that one good year is not a recovery.

Sources: IUCN Red List (2024), BirdLife International (2024), SANCCOB (2024), Two Oceans Aquarium, SANParks (2026).

Why are African penguins endangered?

Mainly because they can't find enough to eat. In the early 2000s their main foods, sardine and anchovy, shifted east, away from the colonies on South Africa's west coast, and commercial purse-seine fishing competes with the penguins for the fish that are left near their colonies. The west-coast colonies lost 69% of their birds between 2001 and 2009, and a 2025 study estimated that about 62,000 breeding penguins died at Dassen and Robben islands between 2004 and 2011, most likely of starvation, while sardine stocks stayed below a quarter of their peak.

Other threats add to the losses:

• Lost nests. Guano, the hardened droppings that penguins once dug their burrows in, was scraped off the islands for fertiliser. Penguins that nest in the open instead leave their eggs and chicks exposed to heat, floods and predators. Egg collecting, a big cause of the decline in the early 20th century, is now illegal.
• Oil. Two spills, in 1994 and 2000, oiled about 30,000 penguins, and fewer than half of the 10,000 cleaned after the 1994 spill survived. Of the 83,224 seabirds affected by 71 oil spills off Namibia and South Africa up to 2021, 91% were African penguins.
• Ships and noise. Since ship-to-ship refuelling began in Algoa Bay in 2016, underwater noise there has doubled. At the same time the nearby St Croix Island colony collapsed, from 3,638 pairs in 2019 to 712 in 2023.
• Predators and rivals. Cape fur seals compete with penguins for fish, take over their breeding sites and kill them at some colonies. Sharks take penguins at sea, and kelp gulls, dogs and cats take eggs and chicks. At some mainland colonies, caracals, mongooses and leopards add to the losses.
• Bird flu. Avian influenza killed about 100 African penguins in South Africa in 2018 and up to 600 in Namibia in 2019, and about 230 more in South Africa since 2021.

If nothing changes, conservationists warn that African penguins could be extinct in the wild by 2035.

Sources: IUCN Red List (2024), Phys.org (2025), BirdLife International (2025), Wikipedia.

Where do African penguins live?

African penguins breed only in South Africa and Namibia, at 26 sites from southern Namibia to Algoa Bay, near Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) in South Africa's Eastern Cape. Most are small offshore islands. Some birds reach Angola outside the breeding season, and strays have turned up as far away as Gabon and Mozambique.

At sea they stay mainly in the cold Benguela Current, usually within 40 km (25 miles) of the coast, and while breeding they usually feed within 20 km of their colony. They don't migrate, but young birds can travel up to 2,000 km after they leave the nest, and most come home to breed.

These were the biggest colonies at the last count:

Two of these are on the mainland near Cape Town: Boulders Beach in Simon's Town and Stony Point in Betty's Bay, both settled by penguins in the 1980s, and both can be visited. Other colonies have gone: Lambert's Bay died out in 2006, and Namibia's Mercury Island, home to 2,646 pairs in 2015, had none in 2023.

Sources: IUCN Red List (2024), Two Oceans Aquarium.

What do African penguins eat?

African penguins eat small schooling fish 5–12 cm (2–5 in) long, mainly sardine, anchovy and round herring, and some squid. In Namibia, where sardine and anchovy have all but disappeared, they live mostly on bearded goby, a less nourishing fish.

They hunt underwater alone, in pairs or in groups of up to 150, and catch more when they hunt together. They can swim at up to about 20 km/h (12 mph) and dive as deep as 130 m (430 ft), though the average dive is about 25 m (82 ft).

Sources: IUCN Red List (2024), Monterey Bay Aquarium, Wikipedia.

What do African penguins look like?

African penguins stand 60–70 cm (24–28 in) tall and weigh 2.2–3.5 kg (4.9–7.7 lb). They are black on the back and white in front, with a black band across the chest and black spots on the belly in a pattern unique to each bird, like a fingerprint. Males and females look almost the same.

Above each eye is a patch of bare pink skin that helps them keep cool. When a penguin gets hot, more blood flows to the patch, where the air can cool it, and the pink deepens.

Young birds are blue-grey on top and pale underneath, with no band or spots, until they moult into adult feathers.

Sources: Wikipedia, Penguins International, Two Oceans Aquarium.

Why are they called jackass penguins?

Because of their call, a loud bray like a donkey's. African penguins are also called Cape penguins, black-footed penguins and South African penguins. They are one of four banded penguins (genus Spheniscus), with the Humboldt, Magellanic and Galápagos penguins of South America.

Sources: Wikipedia, Two Oceans Aquarium.

How long do African penguins live?

African penguins live for 10 to about 25 years in the wild, and up to 34 years in zoos and aquariums. On average they are thought to start breeding at 4 to 6 years old, and the IUCN counts a penguin generation as 10 years.

Sources: Wikipedia, IUCN Red List (2024).

How do African penguins breed?

African penguins nest in colonies, and pairs usually stay together, often for life, returning to the same nest site each year. They breed all year round, with peak months that vary along the coast.

The female lays two eggs, and both parents take turns keeping them warm for 38 to 41 days. Both feed the chicks, which leave the nest at about 2 to 4 months old (55 to 130 days), depending on how much food there is.

Their nests used to be burrows dug into thick guano or sand. With the guano gone, many now nest in the open, under bushes, or in nest boxes and burrows put out by conservation teams.

When adults moult, it takes about three weeks, and because their new feathers aren't waterproof until they're done, they can't go to sea: they fast on land and lose about half their weight. Chicks are often abandoned when their parents need to moult, when food runs short, or in extreme weather.

Sources: Global Penguin Society, IUCN Red List (2024), Monterey Bay Aquarium, Wikipedia, SANCCOB.

What is being done to save African penguins?

• Fishing closures. In March 2025 the Pretoria High Court made an order, agreed between the government, the fishing industry, BirdLife South Africa and SANCCOB, that closes the sea around six colonies to purse-seine fishing for sardine, anchovy and redeye, all year round for ten years, with a review after six. The six (Dassen Island, Robben Island, Stony Point, Dyer Island, St Croix Island and Bird Island) held about three-quarters of all breeding pairs in 2023.
• Rescue and hand-rearing. SANCCOB, a seabird rescue centre in Cape Town, takes in sick, injured, oiled and abandoned birds, and hatches and hand-rears abandoned eggs and chicks. Hand-rearing added more than 8,000 young penguins to the wild population between 2001 and 2022, and they survive and breed about as well as wild-raised birds. In July 2025 SANCCOB opened a new seabird nursery that doubles the number of eggs and chicks it can care for.
• Oil spill response. More than 80% of birds taken in for rehabilitation are returned to the wild. When the MV Treasure sank off Cape Town in June 2000, nearly 19,000 oiled penguins were rescued.
• Nest boxes. Artificial nests have stood in for the lost guano burrows at colonies in South Africa and Namibia for more than 30 years. A study still in review found breeding success 16% higher in artificial nests than in natural ones, though the best design differs from colony to colony.
• A new colony. At De Hoop Nature Reserve on South Africa's south coast, where a colony formed in 2003 and vanished after 2007, BirdLife South Africa is starting one again, with a predator-proof fence, cement decoy penguins, speakers playing penguin calls, and hand-reared chicks moved in from other colonies. Penguins have bred there since 2022, and four pairs were counted in 2023.
• Protected sites. Every breeding site in South Africa is formally protected, and Namibia's Islands' Marine Protected Area, declared in 2009, covers almost 10,000 km² of sea, including all of the country's penguin colonies.

Sources: GroundUp (2025), BirdLife International (2025), SANCCOB, GroundUp (2025), IUCN Red List (2024), Two Oceans Aquarium, Hakai Magazine (2018).

How can you help African penguins?

• Support the people doing the work. SANCCOB rescues and hand-rears penguins, and BirdLife South Africa runs the De Hoop colony and fought for the fishing closures. Both take donations.
• Visit with care. At Boulders Beach and Stony Point, keep your distance, never touch or feed the penguins, and keep dogs well away from colonies.
• Report a penguin in trouble. If you see an oiled, injured or stranded seabird in South Africa, contact SANCCOB rather than handling it yourself.
• Mark the day. African Penguin Awareness Day is the second Saturday of October; the next one is on 9 October 2027.
• Spread the word. In a poll of 2,000 South Africans commissioned by the Blue Marine Foundation and published in January 2025, 64% didn't know the African penguin was Critically Endangered.

Source for the poll: TimesLIVE (2025).

Sources

1. BirdLife International (2024). Spheniscus demersus, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2024. Assessed 4 July 2024.
2. SANCCOB (28 October 2024). African penguin newly classified as Critically Endangered as breeding pairs fall below 10,000.
3. BirdLife International (20 November 2024). African penguin on the brink of extinction.
4. GroundUp (18 March 2025). Court limits fishing to protect African penguins.
5. BirdLife International (23 March 2025). Landmark court victory secures critical protection for African penguins.
6. Phys.org (25 December 2025). Study says African penguins starved en masse off South Africa.
7. SANParks (25 June 2026). African penguin population grows at Boulders colony.
8. SANCCOB. Chick Bolstering Project.
9. GroundUp (28 July 2025). Lifeline for penguins opens in Cape Town.
10. Hakai Magazine (26 September 2018). African penguins get a little help from pretend friends.
11. TimesLIVE (21 January 2025). Poll indicates almost two-thirds of South Africans unaware African penguin critically endangered.
12. Global Penguin Society. African penguin.
13. Penguins International. African penguins.
14. Two Oceans Aquarium. African penguin.
15. Monterey Bay Aquarium. African penguin.
16. Wikipedia. African penguin.