Previously unknown 'supercolony' of Adélie penguins discovered in Antarctica

Date:  March 2, 2018

Source:  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Summary:

In a paper released on March 2nd in the journal Scientific Reports, the scientists 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.  

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. A new study led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), however, is providing new insights on of this species of penguin. In a paper released on March 2nd in the journal Scientific Reports, the scientists 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.

"Until recently, the Danger Islands weren't known to be an important penguin habitat," says co-PI Heather Lynch, Associate Professor of Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University. These supercolonies have gone undetected for decades, she notes, partly because of the remoteness of the islands themselves, and partly the treacherous waters that surround them. Even in the austral summer, the nearby ocean is filled with thick sea ice, making it extremely difficult to access.

Continued  

Antarctic Adélie penguin colony in jeopardy as Marine Protection Area is rejected

Sarah Knapton, science editor 

27 OCTOBER 2017 • 3:49PM

A huge colony of Adélie penguins in Antarctica is at risk after an international commission founded to preserve wildlife at the South Pole refused to establish a Marine Protection Area, despite pleas from conservationists. 

The 18,000 pairs of penguins in Terre Adélie suffered a catastrophic breeding failure at the start of 2017 with only two chicks surviving.

It was hoped that The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) - which is meeting in Australia - would impose greater maritime restrictions on fisheries.

Australia and the EU have been calling for a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in East Antarctic waters since 2010 but when put to a vote on Friday the proposal did not gain the necessary consensus to pass.

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Adelie Penguin population in east Antarctica double previous estimate

Almost six million Adelie Penguins are living in East Antarctica, more than double the number previously thought, scientists have announced, in findings that have implications for conservation.

 

Research by an Australian, French and Japanese team used aerial and ground surveys, tagging and resighting data and automated camera images over several breeding seasons, which allowed them to come up with the new figure. 

They focused on a 5,000 kilometre (3,100 mile) stretch of coastline, estimating it was home to 5.9 million birds - some 3.6 million more than previously thought. On this basis, they estimate a likely global population of 14 to 16 million. 

Before, population estimates only took into account breeding pairs, said Australian Antarctic Division seabird ecologist Louise Emmerson. 

"Non-breeding birds are harder to count because they are out foraging at sea, rather than nesting in colonies on land," she said. 

"However, our study in East Antarctica has shown that non-breeding Adelie Penguins may be as, or more, abundant than the breeders. 

"These birds are an important reservoir of future breeders and estimating their numbers ensures we better understand the entire population's foraging needs." 

Adelie Penguins, slick and efficient swimmers, live on the Antarctic continent and on many small, surrounding coastal islands. They spend the winter offshore in the seas surrounding the pack ice. 

Continued 

New research shows penguins will suffer in a warming world

Penguin population declines are found to occur in hotter years

John Abraham

Wednesday 3 August 2016 11.00 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 3 August 201611.02 BST

We know the world is warming, and we know humans are the main reason. But so what? The thing we’d really like to know is, what will the impacts be on our planet, its biodiversity, our society, our economies? It is only through understanding the impacts of climate change that action for reducing greenhouse gases can be motivated.

This is one of the reasons I was so interested in a very recent study from the University of Delaware, which addressed how penguins will fare in a warming world. The article was published in Scientific Reports and is available open access so anyone with an internet connection can read it here.

Lead author Megan Cimino and her colleagues looked at Adelie penguin populations and asked whether their years of increasing or decreasing population corresponded to warm, cold, or normal temperatures. In the Antarctic, which is where these penguins live, the situation is a bit complex because the land area is large and weather/climate changes are not consistent across the region. 

For instance, large parts of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) are warming quite rapidly, amongst the most rapid in the world. On the other hand, in the East, some areas are warming just a little while others are cooling slightly. Since Adelie penguins live on the periphery of the ice sheet, they are exposed to a wide range of Antarctic climate regions.

The authors found that penguin colony declines occur preferentially in years where the sea waters are warmer than average. This is in contrast to colonies whose populations are stable or increasing – those occur in normal or cooler waters. This finding was particularly striking when Adelie penguin populations in the WAP (which is warming) were compared with populations elsewhere in the continent. 

Read on … 

Penguins seeking food must now waddle 60km to the coast to fish. Over the years, the arduous journey has had a devastating effect on the size of the colony.

Since 2011 the colony of 160,000 penguins has shrunk to just 10,000, according to research carried out by the Climate Change Research Centre at Australia’s University of New South Wales. Scientists predict the colony will be gone in 20 years unless the sea ice breaks up or the giant iceberg, dubbed B09B, is dislodged.

Penguins have been recorded in the area for more than 100 years. But the outlook for the penguins remaining at Cape Denison is dire.

“The arrival of iceberg B09B in Commonwealth Bay, East Antarctica, and subsequent fast ice expansion has dramatically increased the distance Adélie penguins breeding at Cape Denison must travel in search of food,” said the researchers in an article in Antarctic Science.

“The Cape Denison population could be extirpated within 20 years unless B09B relocates or the now perennial fast ice within the bay breaks out”

Continued ...

Let's All Chill: Antarctica's Adélie Penguins Are Probably Fine

By Becky Oskin, Contributing Writer   |   February 16, 2016 07:05am ET

Let's give the penguins a little credit.

The news reported around the world was startling — that some 150,000 Adélie penguins have died in Antarctica because a colossal iceberg cut off their sea access.

But there's no proof yet that the birds are dead. No one has actually found 150,000 frozen penguins. In fact, experts think there's a less horrific explanation for the missing birds: When the fishing gets tough, penguins simply pick up and move. It wouldn't be the first time Adélie penguins marched to new digs. When an iceberg grounded in the southern Ross Sea in 2001, penguins on Ross Island relocated to nearby colonies until the ice broke up.

"Just because there are a lot fewer birds observed doesn't automatically mean the ones that were there before have perished," said Michelle LaRue, a penguin population researcher at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who was not involved in the study. "They easily could have moved elsewhere, which would make sense if nearby colonies are thriving," LaRue told Live Science in an email interview.

Where did they go?

The misplaced penguins lived at a colony on Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, in East Antarctica. In mid-February 2010, the Rhode Island-sized iceberg B09B crashed into the bay's Mertz Glacier. The stranded iceberg forced the penguins to walk more than 37 miles (60 kilometers) for food, researchers report in a new study. The greater the distance to dinner, the harder it is for baby chicks to get enough calories from their penguin parents. 

http://www.livescience.com/53715-missing-adelie-penguins-are-probably-fine.html

Penguins, food and robots: Study seeks to better understand foraging competition between Adelie, gentoo penguins

Date:

January 7, 2016

Source:

University of Delaware

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 U.S. 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; but today only a few thousand pairs are left.

Now, in a study reported in the Nature publication 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.

An ecological theory called the competitive exclusion principle, also known as Gause's law, states that "two species that compete for the exact same resources cannot stably coexist."

"So we set out to explore whether the Adélies and gentoos were eating out of the same lunch box, so to speak," explained Megan Cimino, a doctoral candidate in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and the paper's lead author.

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Penguin chick weights connected to local weather conditions

Date:

October 27, 2014

Source:

University of Delaware

Summary:

Oceanographers have reported a connection between local weather conditions and the weight of Adélie penguin chicks. Adélie penguins are an indigenous species of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. Since 1950, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased 2 degrees Celsius on average, and 6 degrees Celsius during winter.

Continued ...

Happy Feet III: Adélie penguin population actually on the rise

Date:

July 9, 2014

Source:

Stony Brook University

Summary:

The first global census of the Adélie penguin, long considered a key indicator species to monitor and understand the effects of climate change and fishing in the Southern Ocean, has revealed its population (3.79 million breeding pairs) to be 53 percent larger than previously estimated. By using high-resolution satellite imagery, researchers have applied a new method that permits regular monitoring of Adélie penguins across their entire breeding range, and by extension the health of the Southern Ocean ecosystem

read on

Unusual new penguin flu found in Antarctica

May 06, 2014 07:27 AM

WASHINGTON: A new kind of bird flu has been detected for the first time in Adelie penguins in Antarctica, though the virus does not seem to make them sick, researchers said Tuesday.

The virus is unlike any other avian flu known to science, said the report in mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

"It raises a lot of unanswered questions," said study author Aeron Hurt, senior research scientist at the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia.

The findings show that "avian influenza viruses can get down to Antarctica and be maintained in penguin populations," he said.

The study is the first to report on live avian influenza virus in penguins, though previous research has found evidence of influenza antibodies in penguin blood.

But it remains unclear how often various strains of bird flu are introduced into Antarctica, whether the deadliest types could make it there, and which animals or ecosystems allow the virus to survive.

Hurt and colleagues collected samples from some 300 Adelie penguins at Admiralty Bay and Rada Covadonga during January and February 2013.

They found live, infectious avian influenza virus in eight samples, or nearly three percent of the birds. The penguins did not appear to be sick.

All the samples were found to be H11N2 influenza viruses that were highly similar to each other.

Read more: 

Leucsitic penguin from Antarctica

Adelie penguin with unusual colouration.

April 2013.  Elaine Heron took these images of an apparently leucistic penguin on the Antarctic Peninsula that she saw in February this year. This is not the first leucistic Adelie penguin that we have had reported to us. We also have an image of a bird that was seen and photographed in 1963 on Avian Island, off Adelaide Island on the Antarctic Peninsula in 1963, near the British Antarctic Survey Base by reader Mike Fleet.

Leucism (or Leukism)
Leucism is a very unusual condition whereby the pigmentation cells in an animal or bird fail to develop properly. This can result in unusual white patches appearing on the animal, faded colouring, or, more rarely, completely white creatures. 

Albinism is a different condition. The easiest way to tell the difference between the two is that in albinism the eyes are usually pink or red, and albinism affects the entire animal, not just patches.  

Click here to see our gallery of albino and leucistic animals and birds.  

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/leucistic-adelie.html

Emperor Penguins Budget Time for Short Rests On Ice During Chick-Rearing Season

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2012) — For the first time, researchers tracking the behavior of emperor penguins near the sea have identified the importance of sea ice for the penguins' feeding habits. The research, published November 21 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Shinichi Watanabe from Fukuyama University, Japan and colleagues, Japan describes emperor penguin foraging behavior through the birds' chick-rearing season.

Unlike other species like Adelie penguins, emperor penguins spent much more time diving for food, and only used about 30% of their time at sea to take short breaks to rest on sea ice. The birds did not travel for long distances on the ice, or use it for other activities. The study also suggests that these short rest periods on sea ice may help the penguins avoid predators such as leopard seals.

Though sea ice conditions are known to affect penguin populations, the relationship between ice levels and penguins' foraging has been unclear because of the difficulties of tracking the birds at sea. Watanabe says, "The monitoring technique developed in this study will help to understand the relationship."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121121210255.htm