Scientists have been able to discover a handful of previously unknown colonies of emperor penguins in Antarctica using a clever technique – but it’s not one for the squeamish.
By scanning satellite images for patches of penguin poo on the otherwise pristine Antarctic ice, scientist have been able to identify 61 new emperor penguin colonies.
Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge, England, says the improved camera on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite has made this possible.
Penguin poo typically shows up reddish-brown against white snow, but hunting for it with NASA’s Landsat satellite, which has a resolution of 30 metres by 30 metres, had been difficult.
The Sentinel-2 satellite on the other hand has a much finer resolution of 10 metres by 10 metres, and this “makes us able to see things in much greater detail, and pick out much smaller things,” says Fretwell.
Researchers have been able to spot eight new emperor penguin colonies. In addition to three newly confirmed ones, this raises the estimated population by about 10 percent, or 55,000 birds.
The only piece of bad news is the newly discovered groups live about 180 kilometres from the shore, in areas particularly vulnerable to climate change.
