The “Penguin of the North” was a species once common throughout the northern Atlantic. Breeding colonies on as-yet uninhabited islands near Newfoundland, in the St. Lorenz Gulf or on the coast of Iceland accommodated several thousand auks. In the eighteenth century, people began to live in these regions. The new inhabitants hunted the birds for meat, but above all for their down. By the 1770s, the population of the great auks (Pinguinus impennis) had been greatly reduced. Due to their low birth rate (per year, every female laid a maximum of one egg), the population could not recover. The last two great auks were killed by a fisherman on Eddy Island, on the southwest coast of Iceland, in 1844.
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Further Readings:
- Gaston, Anthony J., and Ian L. Jones. The Auks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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1844