It turns out that these elusive seabirds had lived on the islands undetected for at least 2,800 years, according to new, unpublished research presented Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington, D.C.
It all started when a group of researchers spent 10 months doing what they thought was a pan-Antarctic survey of Adélie penguins by looking through every single cloud-free satellite image that they had of the southern continent.
"We thought that we knew where all the [Adélie] penguin colonies were," said Heather Lynch, an ecologist at the Stony Brook University, during the news conference.
That is, until a colleague at NASA developed an algorithm that made the detections automated. ..."
When Lynch and her team went back to look more closely at the images, sure enough, they saw the extent to which the Danger Islands were filled with penguin poop.
"We, I think, had missed it in part because we hadn't expected to find them there," Lynch said. They had previously surveyed one of the islands of the group, but not all of them.
The Danger Islands are not easy to get to, as they are "so-called because they're almost always covered by a thick layer of sea ice all around that precludes regular censuses in this area," Lynch said.
Even so, spurred by the poop stains, Lynch's colleagues journeyed to the islands for a full survey, where they counted — physically on the ground and with drones — just how populated by this seabird they were. "In this area that's so small that it doesn't even appear on most maps of the Antarctic," live more Adélie penguins than the rest of Antarctica combined, Lynch said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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Scientists announced an incredible discovery by looking at poop stains in satellite images — 1.5 million Adélie penguins were living and
thriving on a little patch in Antarctica surrounded by treacherous sea ice called the Danger Islands
Make
Antarctica
Great
Again
Liberals make ME sick, so this doesn't seem too far-fetched.
My comments on the other Penguin thread:
These penguins have apparently been doing just fine for about 2,500 years without any assistance from humans. Now that they have been discovered and the “scientists” have declared that they intend to protect them, we have reason to be concerned. Bad news for the penguins.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3712595/posts?page=4#4
"...These penguins have apparently been doing just fine for about 2,500 years without any assistance from humans. Now that they have been discovered and the “scientists” have declared that they intend to protect them, we have reason to be concerned. Bad news for the penguins..."
Or it could have no effect at all.
They don't know so they default to the worst case scenario in order to impress the media.
It is all those biologists who keep darting animals and subject them to “probing” like aliens do to us instead of just leaving them alone.
*ping*
