In the mid-1800s, as the remaining fur and elephant seals near Macquarie Island were hunted to near extinction, the sealers began turning their attention to the king and royal penguin colonies.  During this period, the penguins, like the elephant seals before them, were hunted and killed in astounding numbers, and their blubber rendered into oil to be used for lighting, lubrication, and as the base for other commercial products.  Though penguin oil was considered inferior to seal oil, it was still quite valuable, and in a few short years hundreds of thousands of penguins were slaughtered on the island.

The rendering of the penguin blubber was done on-site in large boilers that were built and operated right on the beaches of Macquarie.  I saw many of these boilers, now rusted and falling apart, along the coast as we passed–most of them, ironically, surrounded by thriving colonies of king and royal penguins, blissfully unaware  of the purpose behind the nightmare equipment they were living next to.