A large supercolony of Adelie penguins was recently spotted off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Funny enough, they were spotted by their poop, or guano. Satellite images of the Peninsula, which already hosts many penguin colonies under observation, showed an unusually large pink stain of guano, suggesting to researchers that there was more to the island than met the eye.

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The location this was spotted is known as the Danger Islands and is hard to travel to, so satellite imagery was first used to estimate the size of the colony. Once there seemed to be a substantial colony, researches decided it was worth the dangerous trip to get a more in depth understanding of the penguins. After much preparation, researchers made the trip in 2015.

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"We thought, 'Wow! If what we're seeing is true, these are going to be some of the largest Adélie penguin colonies in the world, and it's going to be well worth our while sending in an expedition to count them properly," said Dr. Heather Lynch from Stony Brook University, New York, to BBC.

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Researchers found that the most effective way to count was using drones that could fly in a grid-like pattern over the penguins. The drones were able to take aerial pictures of the colony and a computer program was able to stitch the pictures together into one big collage.

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Due to the southern latitude, the Earth’s magnetic field behaved differently than what most drone pilots are used to and made this task more difficult than it sounds. The cold temperatures also caused many issues with drone batteries freezing if left out for too long.

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A software was then used to count the number of penguins shown and this number was cross referenced with satellite imagery and direct counts.

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Through these techniques, it was discovered the Danger Islands host 751,527 pairs of Adelie Penguins. This is more than the rest of the Antarctic Peninsula combined and include the third and fourth largest Adelie colonies in the world.

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These results were quite shocking when taking into account the decline in Adelie Penguin populations in most other areas, specifically the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula.

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This decline is largely contributed to climate change’s effect on sea ice availability and krill populations, the main food source of penguins in this region. The west side of the Peninsula is currently one of the fastest warming places on the planet.

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The krill are what give the penguin guano it’s distinct pink color which helped researchers detect the super colony, rather than spotting the camouflaged black and white coloring of the penguins themselves.

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A probable factor for the abundance of this super colony is that the Danger Islands are on the northern tip of the Peninsula, where ice has remained more intact than other areas. One thing the scientists don’t seem to understand is how the penguins are finding enough food to feed their massive population.

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“What it is about the ocean right in that region that makes it so productive, is something we’d like to figure out,” Dr. Lynch told the New York Times.

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There are currently two marine-protected areas being planned right now that surround this location and before this discovery, the Danger Islands were considered on the lower side of priority for environmental protection. The super colony shows that this region is obviously an important spot for maintaining the penguin population and scientists argue that it should be taken into special consideration when designating Marine Protected Areas in the region.

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Finding this new population is very encouraging for scientists, with the other biggest population of Adelie penguins living in the Ross Sea close to New Zealand.

 

“Ecologists worry about having all your eggs in one basket. We have a second basket now on opposite ends of the continent,” Dr. Lynch told the New York Times.