1.5 million penguins discovered on remote Antarctic islands

AFP/MSN ^ | 02 Mar 2018 | Rachael Herman

[blueplum]

A thriving "hotspot" of 1.5 million Adelie penguins, a species fast declining in parts of the world, has been discovered on remote islands off the Antarctic Peninsula, surprised scientists said Friday.

The first bird census of the Danger Islands unearthed over 750,000 Adelie breeding pairs, more than the rest of the area combined, the team reported in the journal Scientific Reports. {snip}

When the Landsat data originally suggested the presence of hundreds of thousands of penguins on the islands, she thought it "was a mistake".

"We were surprised to find so many penguins on these islands, especially because some of these islands were not known to have penguins."

Then followed a field expedition for a census using a combination of drone footage, pictures taken on the ground, and an old fashioned walk-about headcount.

"We were... very lucky to have a window of time where the sea ice moved out and we could get a yacht in," said Lynch.

[piasa]

Penguins die back in one spot, it’s because of “climate change”...
yet when they thrive in another spot, the press won’t attribute it to climate change...

[piasa]

Do they taste like chicken or fish?

The birds taste like the chicken at Long John Silver's... and like the fish at Popeye's... does that help?

[Doogle]

...nope nope nope

[Wu]

Devastating!

[G Larry]

Perfect!

I was going to post similar:

‘hey, did’t we just hear......’

[blueplum]

Now it turns out, the area may need stronger protection from overfishing.The enviro drivel did tend to dampen the delight, didn't it? Party poopers. But since researchers hadn't been able to get to the Danger Islands because of ice, and so ignored them, local overfishing is probably not a big problem. The biggest danger is human over-activity, drawing the attention of some rather smart and observant sea critters who will want to investigate what all the hubbub is about, and find a banquet table.