Global forage-fish landings are increasing, with potentially grave consequences for marine ecosystems. Predators of forage fish may be influenced by this harvest, but the nature of these effects is contentious. Experimental fishery manipulations offer the best solution to quantify population-level impacts, but are rare. We used Bayesian inference to examine changes in chick survival, body condition and population growth rate of endangered African penguins Spheniscus demersus in response to 8 years of alternating time–area closures around two pairs of colonies. Our results demonstrate that fishing closures improved chick survival and condition, after controlling for changing prey availability. However, this effect was inconsistent across sites and years, highlighting the difficultly of assessing management interventions in marine ecosystems. Nevertheless, modelled increases in population growth rates exceeded 1% at one colony; i.e. the threshold considered biologically meaningful by fisheries management in South Africa. Fishing closures evidently can improve the population trend of a forage-fish-dependent predator—we therefore recommend they continue in South Africa and support their application elsewhere. However, detecting demographic gains for mobile marine predators from small no-take zones requires experimental time frames and scales that will often exceed those desired by decision makers.

In long‐lived species, reproductive skipping is a common strategy whereby sexually mature animals skip a breeding season, potentially reducing population growth. This may be an adaptive decision to protect survival, or a non‐adaptive decision driven by individual‐specific constraints. Understanding the presence and drivers of reproductive skipping behavior can be important for effective population management, yet in many species such as the endangered African penguin (Spheniscus demersus), these factors remain unknown. This study uses multistate mark‐recapture methods to estimate African penguin survival and breeding probabilities at two colonies between 2013 and 2020. Overall, survival (mean ± SE) was higher at Stony Point (0.82 ± 0.01) than at Robben Island (0.77 ± 0.02). Inter‐colony differences were linked to food availability; under decreasing sardine (Sardinops sagax) abundance, survival decreased at Robben Island and increased at Stony Point. Additionally, reproductive skipping was evident across both colonies; at Robben Island the probability of a breeder becoming a nonbreeder was ~0.22, versus ~0.1 at Stony Point. Penguins skipping reproduction had a lower probability of future breeding than breeding individuals; this lack of adaptive benefit suggests reproductive skipping is driven by individual‐specific constraints. Lower survival and breeding propensity at Robben Island places this colony in greater need of conservation action. However, further research on the drivers of inter‐colony differences is needed.

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