New colony of penguins discovered from space
Satellite mapping technology has discovered another new colony of the highly threatened Emperor penguins in Antarctica, researchers revealed on Friday.
The find, announced by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to mark Penguin Awareness Day, brings the total number of known emperor penguin breeding sites around Antarctica’s coastline to 66.
It is the latest in a series of Emperor penguin breeding sites detected using the satellite technology.
The birds, which are endemic to Antarctica and the biggest of the 18 penguin species at around 1.2 metres (nearly four feet) tall, face almost complete annihilation due to climate change and the loss of sea ice.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service last year placed Emperor penguins, which need sea ice to breed, on its endangered species list, calling the move “an alarm bell” and “call to action”.
Recent projections suggest that under current warming trends, 80 per cent of colonies will be quasiextinct by the end of the century.
Scientists from the BAS uncovered the latest site, home to around 500 birds, by identifying signs of penguin excrement, known as guano, on the landscape at Verleger Point in West Antarctica.
Guano stains the snow and rock terrain brown and is easy to spot, while the flightless birds themselves are too small to be seen from satellites.
GOOD NEWS
Peter Fretwell, who studies wildlife from space at BAS and was lead author of the research revealing the find, called it “exciting” but cautioned that the existential risk to the birds remained.
“Whilst this is good news, like many of the recently discovered sites, this colony is small and, in a region badly affected by recent sea ice loss,” he said.
Emperor penguins are found in areas that are very hard to study because they are remote, inaccessible and extremely cold, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 60 Celsius (-76 Fahrenheit), according to the BAS.
Its researchers have been looking for new colonies for 15 years by searching satellite images for penguin guano.