Penguin Conference Day 5

A long and tiring day marks the end of IPC8.  I’m not quite sure what my neighbours in the halls of residence were up to last night, but all the doors slam shut for fire regulations, and there were doors banging into the early hours of the morning. There was no lie in for me either, as we had to vacate rooms by 9:00am.

I somehow managed to squish everything back into my suitcase, and left it at the accommodation to collect later. I think this was the first day I made it to the first session of the morning, but Richard Sherley and Katrin Ludynia, my supervisors on the Earthwatch expedition on Robben Island, were presenting so that was double incentive not to be late.

There were a range of talks today, some about foraging and prey ability, whilst others explored new technologies available.

Richard’s talk emphasised the impact of the migration of sardine and anchovy from the Western to the Eastern Cape.  What he found was interesting about the type of food and when it was needed. He found that sardine availability in the period leading up to the breeding season was most important for breeding to take place, but that anchovy was more important for breeding success, and for chicks to progress to fledging, especially where there are two chicks per pair rather than one.  Also (probably due to over-fishing) the size and condition of sardines has reduced and this has a direct impact by lowering the body condition of adults.

Katta’s presentation was about the penguins on Dyer Island, which faces some severe challenges and may not exist in 5-10 years’ time. Although clutch size is 1.8 eggs per pair, only 0.5-0.8 are surviving to fledging.  Of these, only 25% survive beyond their first year. Many penguins are migrating away. As the island is more to the East, food availability is not a major factor. 7-8% are lost to seal predation; 4% to incidental oiling. This year, 95 chicks died from hypothermia following a major storm. A large culprit is avian predators, with 30 eggs per day taken by a large population of kelp gulls.  Models have been developed to show the impact of each of these factors.

The first really techie talk of the day was a study of egg incubation time in Adelie penguins in the Antarctic.  This involved substituting a real egg with a dummy one (viable only in non-endangered species!), which collected a range of environmental data including temperature and when the egg was turned by its parent. Interestingly temperature and wind made little difference to the egg, but snow did increase the stress level of the adult, lower the temperature and thus increase the incubation time. So ultimately if climate change causes more precipitation, breeding could take longer, eventually leading to a population decline.

A big brother moment came before lunch with Lynch’s talk. This included satellite imagery at 60cm resolution, which allowed the mapping of areas that are inaccessible. As Adelie’s have a certain nest behaviour leading to a set density, numbers of birds could be worked out from guano covered areas. One colony was mapped and measured in 4 hours from the office, as opposed to a 4 week expedition costing £k. What is scary is that the data is available at 10cm resolution or finer – which would allow identification of individual penguins – but it is not widely available for security reasons.

Another amazing talk by Hart was about camera images. These can be set up in remote parts of the Antarctic, and set up to relay pictures back to base, with batteries lasting up to a year if images are shot in time lapse rather than video stream. It records background information as well, ie. abiotic environmental data like extent of sea ice cover, weather, etc. Or, cameras can focus on individual nests to record behaviour at a finer level. It is a non-invasive way of monitoring populations, and audio capture is being explored. This can identify chicks, and their age from the type of call. The technology is constantly being improved, and they are looking at a citizen science project called Zooniverse to help process the film captured and count penguins. Awesome to think I could take part in a penguin census in the Antarctic without leaving the house!

The last presentation I am going to mention was another technology one, by Handley. In the same way that data loggers and depth recorders are attached to penguins to capture foraging data, he applied video cameras to birds to record a visual of their foraging trips. Results are still being worked through but this helps by showing actual behaviour as it happens, the environment the penguins is working in, species captured and eaten (without the need for stomach flushing or blood isotope tests), and interactions with other penguins.

I finish on that note, because tomorrow I am attending a workshop run by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust on camera trapping. It will obviously be focused on terrestrial mammals, but I am hoping it will give an insight into the techniques that I could use in the future, for example for my OU project courses.

I’ve learnt lots this week about scientific method and process as well as penguin facts, so all in all an excellent week. And one more Gromit bagged at Templemeads station on the way to catch my train home :)