Researchers recently found a "supercolony" of greater than 1,500,000 Adélie penguins in the Risk Islands, a chain of remote, rough islands off the Antarctic Peninsula's north suggestion.
For the previous 40 years, the total variety of Adélie penguins, among one of the most common on the Antarctic peninsula, has been steadily declining—or so biologists thought.
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"Until recently, the Risk Islands just weren't known to be an important penguin environment," says Heather Lynch, partner teacher of ecology & development at Stony Brook College and elderly writer of the paper in Clinical Records.These supercolonies have gone undetected for years, partially because of the remoteness of the islands themselves, and partially because of the treacherous waters that border them. Also in the austral summer, thick sea ice fills the nearby sea, production it incredibly challenging to access.
"Since we understand how important this location is for penguin wealth, we can better progress designing Aquatic Protected Locations in the area and managing the Antarctic krill fishery," Lynch says.
In 2014, Lynch and associate Mathew Schwaller from NASA found telltale guano spots in current NASA satellite images of the islands, meaning a mysteriously a great deal of penguins.
To find out for certain, scientists arranged an exploration to the islands with the objective of checking the birds direct.
When they arrived in December 2015, they found numerous thousands of birds nesting in the rough dirt, and instantly began to tally up their numbers. They also used a customized industrial quadcopter drone to take pictures of the whole island from over.
"The drone allows you fly in a grid over the island, taking photos once each second. You can after that sew them with each other right into a huge collection that shows the whole landmass in 2D and 3D," says Hanumant Singh, teacher of mechanical and commercial design at Northeastern College, that developed the drone's imaging and navigating system.
Once those huge pictures are available, he says, his group can use neural network software to analyze them, pixel by pixel, looking for penguin nests autonomously.
IS THE ADÉLIE POPULATION "…LINKED TO THE EXTENDED SEA ICE CONDITION OVER THERE? FOOD AVAILABILITY? THAT'S SOMETHING WE DON'T KNOW."
The precision that the drone enabled was key, says coauthor Michael Polito, from Louisiana Specify College and a visitor investigator at the Timbers Opening Oceanographic Organization (WHOI).
The variety of penguins in the Risk Islands could provide understanding not simply on penguin populace characteristics, but also on the impacts of changing temperature level and sea ice on the region's ecology.
