Poo Stains Seen From Space

When I read this headline, I was just amazed nobody had
posted about yet on this newsgroup!

Poo Stains Seen From Space Lead to Discovery of Massive Penguin
‘Supercolony’

George Dvorsky
Yesterday 2:25pmFiled to: SO MANY PENGUINS
179.0K

The penguins as seen from an aerial drone.
Photo: A. Borowicz et al., 2018

After noticing the telltale signs of guano streaks on satellite imagery,
an international team of researchers set out to count the number of
penguins on Antarctica’s aptly named Danger Islands. They found a
previously undetected supercolony of over 1.5 million Adélie penguins—a
surprising result, given how poorly these aquatic birds are doing just
100 miles away.

Adélie penguins are hurting along the western side of the Antarctic
Peninsula; their numbers have been in decline for the past four decades.
These penguins are also known to exist in the northern regions of the
peninsula, but this area is hard to explore, and scientists figured that
penguin populations were suffering there as well. New research published
in Scientific Reports shows this assumption was incorrect. A census of
Adélie penguins along the Danger Islands—a chain of remote, rocky
islands at the northern tip of the peninsula—has yielded a seabird
hotspot that’s home to some 1.5 million penguins.



James Clark Ross, a 19th century British explorer, knew what he was
doing when he gave the Danger Islands their name. The waters in and
around this island chain are treacherous, featuring heavy fragments of
ice even during the summer months. It’s a difficult place to access, and
scientific expeditions to the region are understandably few.

Four years ago, Heather Lynch, an ecologist at Stony Brook University
and a co-principal investigator of the new study, teamed up with NASA
colleague Mathew Schwaller to look at satellite photos of the region.
The photos yielded huge streaks of guano stains, suggesting more
penguins may live in the region than previously thought. This prompted a
2015 expedition to the island chain involving researchers from the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institute, Oxford University, Louisiana State
University, and other institutions.


Penguins romping about on a slab of ice in the Danger Islands.
Photo: Michael Polito/Louisiana State University
Soon after their arrival, the team realized that counting the number of
penguins by hand was going to be impossible. To complete this monumental
task, the scientists used a modified commercial quadcopter drone to get
a bird’s eye view of the flightless aquatic avians. These photos were
stitched together into a massive mosaic, showing the Brash, Earle,
Beagle, and HeroÃ*na Islands in both two and three dimensions. Once back
at the lab, the researchers used an AI in the form of a Deep Neural
Network (DetectNet) to analyze the collage, searching for—and
meticulously counting—individual penguin nests. In total, they found
that the Danger Island chain is home to a whopping 751,527 pairs of
Adélie penguins. So at bare minimum, this region is home to 1,503,054
penguins—not including unpaired penguins and any chicks that may be
scurrying around.


Drones were used to assist in the penguin census.
Photo: Rachael Herman, Louisiana State University, Stony Brook University
This result prompted yet another review of pre-existing satellite
imagery, which showed that this supercolony has actually been around for
a while—at least since 1959. “Scientifically, while this is a huge
number of ‘new’ penguins, they are only new to science,� said study
co-author Tom Hart, a researcher at Oxford’s Department of Zoology, in a
statement.

This is an odd result given what’s happening on the western side of the
Peninsula, which is just 100 miles (180 km) away. “Not only do the
Danger Islands hold the largest population of Adélie penguins on the
Antarctic Peninsula, they also appear to have not suffered the
population declines found along the western side of Antarctic Peninsula
that are associated with recent climate change,� Mike Polito, a
Louisiana State University ecologist and co-author of the new study,
said in a statement.


A view of Brash Island (top) with examples of penguin nest sites (below)
Image: A. Borowicz et al., 2018/Scientific Reports
The discovery of the supercolony raises some important questions. Why
are the penguins doing so well at the northern tip when their
counterparts on the west side are struggling so badly? Is it climate
change related, as suggested by Polito? Perhaps the differences in
population has something to do with extended sea ice conditions on the
north side, or the availability of food. “That’s something we don’t
know,� admitted WHOI seabird ecologist Stephanie Jenouvrier.

One thing this discovery is making clear, however, is the need to
protect regions around the Antarctic Peninsula. The western side is
often perturbed by human activity, and these new observations suggest
penguins fare better when they’re undisturbed. This latest find could
add support for the proposed Marine Protected Areas designation for the
Weddell Sea.

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