Happy World Penguin Day,

It’s that time of year: time to celebrate this adorable, somewhat quirky, bird from Antarctica.

This year, we are also celebrating the fact that the Adélie and Emperor penguins from Antarctica’s Ross Sea now live in the world’s largest marine protected area.

Honk! Honk! (that’s ‘hooray!’ in penguin)

This amazing global agreement was thanks to active global citizens like you telling world leaders that the Southern Ocean needs protecting, not exploiting.

But our work isn’t quite finished. Actually, we are only getting started. The Ross Sea Marine Protected Area is just the first in the network of marine reserves needed to protect the Southern Ocean from overfishing. This year, 24 countries and the EU will negotiate the creation of new marine protected areas in East Antarctica and the Weddell Sea, where literally millions of penguins forage for food.

Right now, these countries are working out their negotiating positions for the meeting ofCCAMLR in October. World leaders need to know that their constituents support further protection of the Southern Ocean in order to adopt strong negotiating positions.

Will you sign and share the new #Antarctica2020 petition, supporting the creation of three new marine reserves in the Southern Ocean by 2020?

World Penguin Day activities are taking place around the world. In South Korea, they arecelebrating, despite being over 13,000 kilometres from Antarctica’s icy shores. As the only continent in the world without citizens, the future of Antarctica relies on all of us speaking up and telling our governments to take the lead and protect this special place for the future.

Help us grow the global #Antarctica2020 movement. 

Yours kindly,

Claire Christian

Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition

P.S. What kind of penguin are you? Take this quiz to find out.