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| Wed, 5th Aug 2020 13:08:00 |
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Climate change: Satellites find new colonies of Emperor penguins |
The Emperors' whole life cycle is centred around the availability of sea-ice, and if this is diminished in the decades ahead - as the climate models project - then the animals' numbers will be hit hard.
The satellites' infrared imagery threw up eight such breeding sites and confirmed the existence of three others that had been mooted in the era before high-resolution space pictures.
"It's good news because there are now more penguins than we thought," said BAS remote-sensing specialist Dr Peter Fretwell.
They are all in gaps between existing colonies. Emperor groups, it seems, like to keep at least 100km between themselves. The new sites maintain this distancing discipline.
Breeding success for Emperors rests upon the presence of so-called "fast ice". This is the sea-ice that sticks to the edge of the continent or to icebergs.
It's low and flat, and an ideal surface on which to lay an egg, incubate it and then raise the subsequent chick in its first year of life.
But this seasonal ice needs to be long-lived, to stay intact for at least eight or nine months to be useful.
At the moment, they are classified as "Near Threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the organisation that keeps the lists of Earth's endangered animals.
Read original full article
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