Sci­en­tists sur­pri­sed by lar­ger num­bers of Adé­lie pen­gu­ins

During a a joint ven­ture pro­ject of Aus­tra­li­an, French, and Japa­ne­se rese­ar­chers sci­en­tists found that the­re were twice as many Adé­lie pen­gu­ins as ori­gi­nal­ly thought. They obser­ved a 5000km long coas­tal stretch in the East Ant­ar­c­tic. Ins­tead of the expec­ted 3.6 mil­li­on birds they obser­ved almost 6 mil­li­on Adé­lie pen­gu­ins in the stu­dy area. This would lead to an over­all esti­ma­te of 14-16 mil­li­on Ade­lie pen­gu­ins world-wide.

This has, among­st others, impli­ca­ti­ons on ant­ar­c­tic krill and other fishe­ries, as such a gre­at num­ber of pen­gu­ins eats about 200,000t krill and 19,000t fish during one bree­ding sea­son in the East Ant­ar­c­tic alo­ne. The data were deter­mi­ned over seve­ral years by means of satel­li­te tech­no­lo­gy, indi­vi­du­al tag­ging and auto­ma­tic came­ra moni­to­ring.

Source: Aus­tra­li­an Govern­ment, Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment and Ener­gy