Little blue penguins eat mainly small schooling fish, especially anchovies, pilchards, and sprat. They also take squid, crustaceans, and occasionally jellyfish. An adult little blue penguin consumes roughly its own body weight in food each day, which for the world’s smallest penguin species (around 1 kg) means a kilogram or so of seafood daily.
Primary Prey Species
The little blue penguin is a generalist predator, but it clearly favors small, schooling fish found in shallow coastal waters. Camera-equipped penguin studies off southeastern Australia identified seven main prey types: bellowsfish, juvenile herring-like fish, Australian anchovy, jellyfish, mackerel, pilchard, and fish captured from around jellyfish. At one study site (Gabo Island), bellowsfish were the single most consumed prey, making up about 24% of all captures. Anchovy accounted for roughly 11%, and mackerel about 6%.
Beyond those core species, little blue penguins also catch squid (particularly Gould’s squid and arrow squid), sandy sprat, garfish, pipefish, whiting, and blue warehou. Overall, more than half of all observed prey captures were smaller schooling or juvenile fish, confirming that these penguins hunt whatever appropriately sized fish are abundant near their colony rather than specializing in one species.
One surprising finding: fish sheltering in or around jellyfish made up the second most consumed prey category at nearly 15% of captures. Little blue penguins actively target the small fish that cluster around jellyfish, picking them off as easy meals.
How Diet Varies by Location
What a little blue penguin eats depends heavily on where it lives. These penguins range across southern Australia, New Zealand, and nearby islands, and prey composition shifts dramatically from colony to colony. In Australia, anchovies and pilchards tend to dominate. In New Zealand, sprat is often the preferred fish.
The differences can be extreme. During one breeding season in Oamaru, New Zealand, a single species of gudgeon made up over 90% of the diet. Meanwhile, at Stewart Island, arrow squid accounted for nearly 75% of what penguins ate. Australian colonies like Phillip Island tend to show a more varied diet with multiple fish and squid species in roughly equal proportions. Even neighboring colonies can have different diets: penguins from two nearby colonies showed different prey composition during early breeding stages, despite their foraging areas overlapping.
How They Hunt
Little blue penguins are shallow divers that forage close to home. They make single-day trips, typically covering about 31 km total and venturing no more than 15 km from the colony. This is far more modest than larger penguin species that may travel hundreds of kilometers on multi-day hunts.
Their dives are short and shallow. About 62% of all diving activity happens in the top 10 meters of the water column, and over 99% stays within 30 meters of the surface. Penguins rarely dive below 20 meters even when prey is detected at greater depths, though the deepest recorded dive reached 67 meters. This shallow-water strategy makes sense for a bird that weighs roughly one kilogram and hunts the small schooling fish that concentrate near the surface.
Inside their mouths, little blue penguins have a specialized tool for gripping slippery prey. The tongue is densely covered in large, backward-pointing spiny projections made of tough, hardened tissue. These spines act like a one-way grip: fish slide easily toward the throat but can’t wriggle back out. The upper surface of the tongue also has a network of elastic fibers just beneath the surface, giving it flexibility during swallowing. The sides and underside of the tongue lack these features, concentrating the gripping power exactly where it’s needed.
Seasonal Eating Patterns
Little blue penguins don’t eat the same way year-round. Their biggest dietary challenge comes during the annual molt, when they shed and regrow all their feathers over a period of roughly two to three weeks. Because their feathers lose waterproofing during this process, molting penguins can’t enter the water to hunt. They must build up enough fat reserves beforehand to survive the entire fasting period on land.
Molt onset typically peaks in February (late summer in the Southern Hemisphere), and this timing isn’t accidental. It coincides with peak availability of pilchards and Australian anchovies, the calorie-dense fish that let penguins pack on weight quickly. By starting the molt when prey is still abundant, penguins maximize their chances of entering the fast in good condition.
During the breeding season, adults also increase their food intake to feed chicks. Parents make daily foraging trips and return to the nest at dusk to regurgitate partially digested fish for their young. The specific prey brought back to chicks mirrors whatever schooling fish are most available near the colony at that time of year.