Tawaki
penguins swim up to 80 km per day to reach their feeding grounds
Date: August 29, 2018
Source: PLOS
Summary:
Fiordland
penguins, Eudyptes pachyrhynchus,
known as Tawaki, migrate up to 2,500 km from their breeding site, according to
a study publishing August 29 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Thomas
Mattern of the University of Otago and colleagues.
Tawaki
penguins migrate from their breeding sites on the west coast of New Zealand's
South Island, where they feed at sea for several weeks to refuel after long
periods of fasting on land while rearing chicks. To find out where the seabirds
go, the authors attached satellite transmitters to 10 male and 7 female adult
Tawaki penguins from November 2016 to March 2017, and compared the migration
routes with published oceanographic data such as surface temperature and
currents. Tags on nine birds continued emitting data up until they turned back
for the return journey, and five were tracked for the entire migration.
They
found that the penguins travelled between 3,500 and 6,800 km on their 69-day
migration -- making theirs one of the longest penguin pre-moult migrations
recorded to date. The birds travelled between 20km and 80km per day -- which
the authors suggest may be close to the upper limit for penguin swimming.
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