Scientists discover new penguin colonies from space

ANTARCTICA – A new British Antarctic Survey (BAS) study using satellite mapping technology reveals there are nearly 20% more emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica than was previously thought. The results provide an important benchmark for monitoring the impact of environmental change on the population of this iconic bird.

Emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) on 
sea ice at the Brunt ice shelf 
near BAS Halley Research Station
Credit: BAS

Reporting on 4 August 2020 in the journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, the authors describe how they used images from the European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission to locate the birds. They found 11 new colonies, three of which were previously identified but never confirmed. That takes the global census to 61 colonies around the continent.

Emperor penguins need sea ice to breed and are located in areas that are very difficult to study because they are remote and often inaccessible with temperatures as low as −50°C (−58 degrees Fahrenheit). For the last 10 years, BAS scientists have been looking for new colonies by searching for their guano stains on the ice.

Researchers go cuckoo: Antarctic penguins release an extreme amount of laughing gas

ANTARCTICA – In a new study, University of Copenhagen researchers showed that penguins in Antarctica give out copious amounts of nitrous oxide via their faeces – so much so, that the researchers went "cuckoo" from being surrounded by penguin poo.
 
On the Atlantic island of South Georgia, king penguins live in huge colonies. They spend their days eating krill, squid and fish, feeding their chicks and producing guano (poo). Nothing mind-boggling about that, you might say.

But there is something very special about the comings and goings of king penguins. The birds release tremendous amounts of nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, via their guano, according to the 2019 study.

Study reveals whaling and climate change led to 100 years of feast or famine for Antarctic penguins

ANTARCTICA – New research reveals how penguins have dealt with more than a century of human impacts in Antarctica and why some species are winners or losers in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

A chinstrap penguin standing on snow near a
breeding colony along the Antarctic Peninsula.
Credit: Michael Polito © Louisiana State University

Michael Polito, assistant professor in Louisiana State University’s (LSU's) Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences and his co-authors published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Although remote, Antarctica has a long history of human impacts on its ecosystems and animals. By the early to mid-1900s, humans had hunted many of its seals and whales nearly to extinction. Seal and whale populations are now recovering, but decades of climate change and a growing commercial fishing industry have further degraded the environment,” Polito said.

Without Paris Accord, emperor penguins are in dire straits

ANTARCTICA – Unless climate change is slowed, emperor penguins will be marching towards extinction, according to a newly published study co-authored by a University of Canterbury (UC) scientist.

“Basically, if we don’t hit the Paris Accord emissions goals, emperor penguins are in deep trouble,” said paper co-author UC scientist Dr Michelle LaRue, a Lecturer of Antarctic Marine Science in the School of Earth and Environment.

Emperor penguins are some of the most striking and charismatic animals on Earth, but a new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the United States has found that climate change may render them extinct by the end of this century. The study, which was part of an international collaboration between scientists, was published on 7 November in the journal Global Change Biology.

Study recommends special protection of emperor penguins

ANTARCTICA – In a new study published in the journal Biological Conservation, an international team of researchers recommends the need for additional measures to protect and conserve one of the most iconic Antarctic species – the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri).

Adult emperor penguins with chick
on the sea ice close to Halley Research
Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf.
Photo credit: British Antarctic Survey

The researchers reviewed over 150 studies on the species and its environment as well as its behaviour and character in relation to its breeding biology. Current climate change projections indicate that rising temperatures and changing wind patterns will negatively impact the sea ice on which emperor penguins breed. Some studies indicate that emperor populations will decrease by more than 50% over the current century.

The researchers therefore recommend that the species be escalated to ‘vulnerable’ from its current status as ‘near threatened’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. They conclude that improvements in climate change forecasting in relation to impacts on Antarctic wildlife would be beneficial, and recommend that the emperor penguin should be listed by the Antarctic Treaty as a Specially Protected Species.

"Catastrophic" breeding failure at one of world’s largest emperor penguin colonies

ANTARCTICA – Emperor penguins at the Halley Bay colony in the Weddell Sea have failed to raise chicks for the last three years, scientists have discovered.

Adult emperor penguins with chick on the
sea ice close to Halley Research Station on
the Brunt Ice Shelf. Credit: Richard Burt.

Researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) studied very high resolution satellite imagery to reveal the unusual findings, published on 25 April 2019 in the journal Antarctic Science.

Until recently, the Halley Bay colony was the second largest in the world, with the number of breeding pairs varying each year between 14,000–25,000; around 5–9% of the global emperor penguin population.

The failure to raise chicks for three consecutive years is associated with changes in the local sea-ice conditions. Emperor penguins need stable sea-ice on which to breed, and this icy platform must last from April when the birds arrive, until December when their chicks fledge.

For the last 60 years the sea-ice conditions in the Halley Bay site have been stable and reliable. But in 2016, after a period of abnormally stormy weather, the sea-ice broke up in October, well before any emperor chicks would have fledged.

This pattern was repeated in 2017 and again in 2018 and led to the death of almost all the chicks at the site each season.

Emperor penguins' first journey to sea

ANTARCTICA – Emperor penguin chicks hatch into one of Earth’s most inhospitable places – the frozen world of Antarctica. Childhood in this environment is harsh and lasts only about five months, when their formerly doting parents leave the fledglings to fend for themselves.

Photo: Vincent Munier

New research by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues reveals the previously unknown behaviours of juvenile emperor penguins in their critical early months when they leave their birth colony and first learn how to swim, dive and find food.

The paper, published on 17 January 2019 in Marine Ecology Progress Series, also highlights the unique connection between juvenile diving behaviours and a layer of the ocean known as the thermocline, where warmer surface waters meet cooler deep waters below and where their prey likely gather in groups.

Are emperor penguins eating enough?

ANTARCTICA – For emperor penguins waddling around a warming Antarctic, diminishing sea ice means less fish to eat. How the diets of these tuxedoed birds will hold up in the face of climate change is a big question scientists are grappling with.

Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have developed a way to help to determine the foraging success of emperor penguins by using time-lapse video observations relayed to scientists thousands of miles away. The new remote sensing method is described in the Journal of Applied Physics.

Emperor penguin foraging behaviour revealed

ANTARCTICA – An unavoidable delay in a research ship's voyage to Antarctica resulted in some surprising and important findings about the behaviour of emperor penguins.

Dr Kim Goetz observing emperor penguins during
the study at Cape Colbeck. Photo: Patrick Robinson

A newly-published paper written by NIWA marine ecologist Dr Kim Goetz and collaborators outlines the previously unknown diving and long-distance swimming abilities of emperor penguins outside the breeding season.

Dr Goetz’s project involved tagging 20 emperor penguins in 2013 and analysing the data on their movements transmitted via satellite. She discovered the penguins travelled between 273 km and nearly 9000 km and completed dives that ranged between 1 and 32.2 minutes, exceeding the previous recorded dive record of 27.6 minutes.

But it was finding the penguins in the first place that was most intriguing.

'Supercolony' of Adelie penguins discovered in Antarctica

ANTARCTICA – For the past 40 years, the total number of Adélie penguins, one of the most common on the Antarctic peninsula, has been steadily declining – or so biologists have thought. But a new study led by Stony Brook University ecologist Heather Lynch and colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is providing new insights about this penguin species. In a Scientific Reports paper, the international research team announced the discovery of a previously unknown “supercolony” of more than 1,500,000 Adélie penguins in the Danger Islands, a chain of remote, rocky islands off of the Antarctic Peninsula’s northern tip.

Scientists track penguins by analysing tail feathers

ANTARCTICA – Knowing where and how Antarctic penguins, and other seabirds and marine predators, migrate is critical for conservation efforts. Electronic tracking devices have helped scientists track marine animals’ migration patterns, but the devices can be expensive, invasive for the animal and challenging to retrieve.

A pair of nesting adult chinstrap penguins
in the South Shetland Islands,
Antarctic Peninsula.
Photo credit: M. Polito, LSU

Now, scientists have discovered a new and potentially better way to track where penguins go over the winter using forensics. The study was published on 9 August in Biology Letters.

“You can say, penguins ‘are where they eat,’ because a geochemical signature of their wintering area is imprinted into their feathers,” said Louisiana State University (LSU) Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences Assistant Professor Michael Polito, the lead author of the study.

Chinstrap and Adélie penguins are part of the family of “brush-tailed” penguins named after their long, stiff tail feathers. These birds shed all of their feathers after each breeding season and before they migrate to their oceanic wintering grounds. However, their long tail feathers continue to grow well into the winter when penguins are at sea.

Finding new homes won't help emperor penguins cope with climate change

ANTARCTICA – If projections for melting Antarctic sea ice through 2100 are correct, the vanishing landscape will strip emperor penguins of their breeding and feeding grounds and put populations at risk. But like other species that migrate to escape the wrath of climate change, can these iconic animals be spared simply by moving to new locations?

Stephanie Jenouvrier with young emperor penguins.
Photo credit: Stephanie Jenouvrier,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

According to new research led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they cannot. Scientists report that dispersal may help sustain global emperor penguin populations for a limited time, but, as sea ice conditions continue to deteriorate, the 54 colonies that exist today will face devastating declines by the end of this century. They say the emperor penguin should be listed as an endangered species. The study was recently published in the journal Biological Conservation.

“We know from previous studies that sea ice is a key environmental driver of the life history of emperor penguins, and that the fifty-percent declines we’ve seen in Pointe Géologie populations along the Antarctic coast since the 1950s coincide with warmer climate and sea ice decline,” said Stephanie Jenouvrier, WHOI biologist and lead author of the study.

Time-lapse cameras peek at penguins' winter behaviour

ANTARCTICA – Not even the most intrepid researcher wants to spend winter in Antarctica, so how can you learn what penguins are doing during those cold, dark months? Simple: Leave behind some cameras.

Time-lapse cameras recorded images of
gentoo penguins at their breeding sites in winter.
Photo credit: T Hart

Year-round studies across the full extent of a species' range are especially important in polar areas, where individuals within a single species may adopt a variety of different migration strategies to get by, and a new study from The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses this unique approach to get new insights into gentoo penguin behaviour.

Gentoo penguins are of interest to scientists because they're increasing at the southern end of their range in the Western Antarctic Peninsula, a region where other penguin species are declining.

Little is known about their behaviour during the non-breeding season, so Caitlin Black and Tom Hart of the University of Oxford and Andrea Raya Rey of Argentina's Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas used time-lapse cameras to examine patterns in gentoo penguins' presence at breeding sites across their range during the off season.

Penguin colony repeatedly decimated by volcanic eruptions

ANTARCTICA – One of the largest colonies of gentoo penguins in Antarctica was decimated by volcanic eruptions several times during the last 7,000 years according to a new study.

A gentoo penguin excreting guano

onto the snow near Potter Cove,

King George Island.

Photo credit: Steve Roberts

An international team of researchers, led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS), studied ancient penguin guano and found the colony came close to extinction several times due to ash fall from the nearby Deception Island volcano. Their results were published on 11 April in Nature Communications.

Ardley Island, near the Antarctic Peninsula, is currently home to a population of around 5,000 pairs of gentoo penguins. Using new chemical analyses of penguin guano extracted in sediment cores from a lake on the island, the researchers unraveled the history of the penguin colony.

East Antarctica's Adelie penguin population more than double previous estimate

ANTARCTICA – Scientists have their best estimate yet of how many Adélie penguins live in East Antarctica, numbering almost six million, 3.6 million more than previously estimated.

The new research by a team of Australian, French and Japanese scientists used aerial and ground surveys, tagging and resighting data, and automated camera images over several breeding seasons.

The researchers focused on a 5000 kilometre stretch of coastline in East Antarctica, estimating 5.9 million birds and extrapolating that out to likely global estimate of 14–16 million birds.

Research finds Antarctic penguins infected with avian influenza viruses

ANTARCTICA – An Australian researcher has found a new avian influenza virus in Antarctica, causing concern viruses could be reaching the continent more often than previously thought, potentially having implications for the health of the unique species of birdlife.

Associate Professor Aeron Hurt from the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) – a joint venture between The University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital – travelled to Antarctica together with collaborators to survey penguins and other birds between 2013 and 2015.

In 2013, Associate Professor Hurt discovered a particularly unusual avian influenza strain in the penguin populations, which had evolved over many years to be substantially different to any other avian influenza viruses around the world.

In this most recent project, two viruses were identified; the first was very similar to the one discovered in 2013, but the second was similar to a North American strain, highlighting it had only been recently introduced to the region.

Penguin populations could drop 60 percent by the end of the century

Adelie penguins at risk
Credit: University of Delaware/Megan Cimino

ANTARCTICA - Climate has influenced the distribution patterns of Adélie penguins across Antarctica for millions of years.

The geologic record shows that as glaciers expanded and covered Adélie breeding habitats with ice, penguin colonies were abandoned. When the glaciers melted during warming periods, this warming positively affected the Adélie penguins, allowing them to return to their rocky breeding grounds.

But now, University of Delaware (UD) scientists and colleagues report that this beneficial warming may have reached its tipping point.

Abandoned 'supercolony' may hold clues to penguins' response to climate change

More than 600,000 Adelie penguins nest on Cape Adare,
Antarctica. Photo credit: Steve Emslie, UNCW

ANTARCTICA – Researchers recently discovered that Antarctica’s most populous colony of Adélie penguins may have once been nearly twice the size it is today. Clues about why the colony grew so large and what caused the population to decline could help scientists chart the penguins’ response to changes in climate and food resources.

Collaborative research conducted by Louisiana State University (LSU), University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), University of California at Santa Cruz and University of Saskatchewan led to this discovery at Cape Adare, Antarctica.

Penguin chicks huddle for warmth and protection

ANTARCTICA - Location and environmental conditions may influence when gentoo chicks huddle in cold, wet Antarctic conditions, according to a study published this month in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Caitlin Black from the University of Oxford and colleagues.

Many penguin species huddle together and form creches (aggregations) to conserve heat, gain protection and for other purposes. Although scientists have observed gentoo penguin chicks huddling during the post-guarding period, a period when the parents leave the chicks daily to go find food, these creches have never been studied over a large spatial range in the Antarctic.

The authors of this study looked at the adaptive benefit of creches by using time-lapse cameras to observe gentoo penguin huddling behaviour during the post-guarding period across four study sites at different latitudes.

Adelie penguins, gentoo penguins, food and robots

University of Delaware researchers are working
to better understand foraging competition between
Adelie and Gentoo penguins.
Photo credit: Chris Linder

ANTARCTICA - For hundreds of years, Adélie penguins have been breeding in the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), which has recently become one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth.

At Palmer Station, a US research base located along the WAP, scientists have been monitoring Adélie penguin population declines for decades. There were 15,000 breeding pairs of Adélie penguins in 1975; today only a few thousand pairs are left.

Now, in a study published in Scientific Reports, University of Delaware oceanographers consider whether Adélie penguins and gentoo penguins - newcomers to the Palmer Station region over the last two decades - may be competing for the same food resources and whether this might exacerbate the Adélie population decline.