A colony of Emperor penguins that was thought to have disappeared has been found thanks to the Sentinel-2 satellite of the European Copernicus programme, the Earth observation program of the European Commission and the European Space Agency.
It was the Halley Bay colony, which has now moved to a new home 30 kilometers east of the old one after the calving of a huge iceberg from the Brunt Ice Shelf in northwestern Antarctica.
This was announced by the British Antarctic Survey which, by monitoring the continent in search of new, unknown breeding sites of Emperor penguins, also discovered new colonies, bringing the total number to 66. Changes in sea ice conditions along the Antarctic coast, due to global warming, have in fact forced several colonies to move in search of more stable ice on which to reproduce.
Emperor penguin breeding sites are typically found in remote and inhospitable places, so researchers rely on satellites, which are able to easily spot the brown spots of bird guano that stand out against the intense white of ice and snow.
Despite the new colonies just discovered, however, the forecasts for the future of Emperor penguin populations are far from rosy: earlier this year, in fact, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey reported a catastrophic failure in the reproduction of these iconic animals, caused by the loss of sea ice.
“All colonies except one are small, with fewer than 1,000 birds, so even those now identified make little difference to the overall population size,” comments Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey: “Indeed, the result has been put entirely overshadowed by recently reported reproductive failures.”
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