SUB-ANTARCTIC – The world's biggest colony of king penguins is found in the National Nature Reserve of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). Using high-resolution satellite images, researchers from the Chizé Centre for Biological Studies (CNRS/University of La Rochelle) have detected a massive 88% reduction in the size of the penguin colony, located on Île aux Cochons, in the Îles Crozet archipelago. The causes of the colony's collapse remain a mystery but may be environmental. These findings were published in Antarctic Science on 25 July 2018.
Known since the 1960s, the colony of king penguins on Île aux Cochons, in the southern Indian Ocean, had the distinction of being the world's biggest colony of king penguins and second biggest colony of all penguins. However, due to its isolation and inaccessibility, no new estimates of its size were made over the past decades.
The Chizé team used high-resolution satellite images to measure changes in the size of the colony since the island was last visited by a crew of scientists in 1982. At the time, the colony included 500,000 breeding pairs and consisted of over two million penguins. To calculate the area occupied by the colony at different times between 1960 and the present, the researchers studied changes in its contours over the years. They found that the colony has shrunk, yielding its territory to encroaching vegetation. Photographs taken from a helicopter during the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition confirm that the colony's penguin population has plummeted.
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| Île aux Cochons king penguin colony in 1982. Photo © Henry Weimerskirch |
The Chizé team used high-resolution satellite images to measure changes in the size of the colony since the island was last visited by a crew of scientists in 1982. At the time, the colony included 500,000 breeding pairs and consisted of over two million penguins. To calculate the area occupied by the colony at different times between 1960 and the present, the researchers studied changes in its contours over the years. They found that the colony has shrunk, yielding its territory to encroaching vegetation. Photographs taken from a helicopter during the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition confirm that the colony's penguin population has plummeted.
