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Cryosphere

Cryosphere

AGU Fall Meeting: spying on penguin diet from space

14 Dec 2018 Liz Kalaugher
Photo of Adélie Penguin

In 2014 pink guano deposits that showed up in Landsat images revealed that some 1.5 million Adélie penguins live on the Danger Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula in a previously unknown colony. Now scientists have used the precise shade of pink to investigate what the penguins eat. Adélie penguins in the west of Antarctica tend to eat more krill whilst those in the east prefer fish, as Casey Youngflesh of the University of Connecticut detailed at a press conference at the AGU Fall Meeting in Washington DC.

It’s possible that these differences are because there are fewer Antarctic silverfish near the Antarctic Peninsula, perhaps because of changes in sea ice. Youngflesh is continuing investigations on this front.

Youngflesh collected guano samples and analysed them in “a small unventilated room in the belly of a ship”, as he told journalists. “It’s quite smelly.” Chemical analysis of each sample revealed what the birds had eaten, enabling Youngflesh to link the colour of guano in satellite images to penguin diet via statistics.

Images from the satellite archive indicates that the penguins haven’t changed their diet over time.

You can find out more about Antarctica’s penguins, and also become a “penguin detective” at penguinmap.com, a portal created to provide policymakers with easily accessible information.

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