chinstrap penguins are exquisitely adapted to their environment. They live in some of the harshest conditions in the world, the Antarctic Peninsula, a strip nest in windblown, rocky coves country grow the most northerly part of the frozen continent covers. In water, are precision hunters, darting for krill, the small crustaceans such as shrimp which are their only source of nourishment, developed using barbed tabs to collect the slipperiest robbery. On land, this high 2-2.5 meters ratites are incredible ladder climbers capable rocky slopes, despite their ungainly waddle. Their perfect adaptation to local conditions of their ideal barometer for the future of the region is. If something changes in the marine environment, the health of Chinstrap penguins will be one of the most reliable indicators. They are the canaries of the Southern Ocean. And these emissaries lovely, black and white from Antarctic waters begin to disappear. Scientists must have a chin strap census conducted along the Antarctic Peninsula sharp drop in many colonies, with some people seeing reductions up to 77% discovered after last surveyed, about 50 years. Independent researchers who have crossed a ride on a Greenpeace expedition to the region found that each of the 32 colonies had questioned on Elephant Island, a large outpost Chin rejected. Overall, the total population of the island chinstrap by more than half when it was dropped from 122.550 breeding pairs in 1971 to 52,786 in January 2020. “These significant decreases suggest that the ecosystem in the Southern Ocean has fundamentally changed 50 years ago, and that the impact of this ripple are the species of the food chain such as chinstrap penguins, “says Heather J. Lynch, associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, who designed the study . “There is something broken in the Southern Ocean,” adds ornithologist Noah Strycker, a member of Penguin Census team, and the author of the book 2015 of the thing with feathers. “Our best guess at why that might be, is climate change, which, as we know, the Antarctic Peninsula region proposes tougher … pretty much anywhere else in the world except the Arctic.” The reduced sea ice water heating and phytoplankton, krill depend for feeding and survival. increasing acidification of the oceans, a side effect of the global emissions of carbon dioxide, also relates to their ability to reproduce. In the last five weeks Stony Brook scientists have teamed up with robotics and drone specialists from Boston Northeastern University survey chin relatively unexplored penguin colonies along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Chin prefers rock, brought by the wind for nesting sites because they dry the best conditions to keep the eggs safe and provide. These conditions make it difficult to look for: frost, wind Scientists, rain and snow endured coastal colonies of small inflatable speedboats at hand, then manually counting the colonies encrypted penguins. The robotics team has supported the survey on the material with drone. When they return to the lab, the team members, the results are used to teach computers how to identify nests intelligence to aid in future studies with artificial. The researchers examined 56 colonies in 37 days. So far, the numbers have just published by Elephant Iceland pages, which were the first to be to measure. The final report will be released in a few weeks. But these early results appear in most of the colonies to be consistent. “From what limited information we have since 1980, appears his chinstrap population of over half down,” he says the biologist Steve Forrest, the leader of the expedition team. On January 31, 2020, 26 days after shipment, motored Forrest head of President promontory on Iceland Scout for potential snow survey sites around. About 30 years ago, researchers have documented a colony, but Forrest had heard rumors, that the past was gone from the boats. The sea was too rough for a census that day, but it did not matter. Peering through binoculars, Forrest has seen no evidence that there were penguins on the island left at all. “I was hoping we could finally find the colony,” he says. “But it is not the search for a more along the lines of what we expected.” Some of the elderly in the most difficult-to-reach areas unreliable surveys – carried out at a distance by boat – so an accurate assessment than in the last three decades has changed, it is impossible. However, says Forrest, it is confident that the chinstrap populations decline, particularly in the South Shetland Islands (including Elephant Island) off the coast of the peninsula. “I expect a lot of abandoned nests, so I’m inclined to believe that there is a real decline, but the exact scope is uncertain.” While the number of chinstraps may be in decline, the researchers saw a significant increase gentoo penguin populations. That gives Gentoo which have the characteristic black band around the red-orange beak neck and chin lacking their name, are much more flexible about what they eat and the conditions in which they breed. This means that they can adapt more easily to changes in their environment. Forrest calls “The winners climate change” for their ability to thrive in conditions that threatened chinstraps- least short term. Strycker calls the process by which newcomers take Strycker chin areas, a dedicated bird watchers, who chronicled his attempt to identify more than half of the species of land birds in a year in a book in 2017 called Birding Without Frontiers “gentoofication.” an obsession, a search and the greatest year in the world admits that in the final analysis, it is not even about the penguins. It is krill. Krill form the basis of the marine food system – the fish they eat are food for fish, according to almost all predators. The fish that we let people eat mainly krill for food. When krill populations are unhealthy, it means trouble for everyone else. But krill in their krillions, they are difficult to study. That’s where comes the chin. For example, some species of whales are Chinstraps krill specialists, but are relatively simple compared to whales to monitor, with its irregular migration patterns. Chinstrap penguins return reliably for the same year the colonies to breed for years, so evaluating the health of the colonies over time can have a better idea of krill do because they depend on the scientists. That is, “why should we worry about a number of penguins go missing from a remote island that nobody has ever heard,” said Strycker. “Penguins give us an idea of what is around us in the ocean in front of him. The oceanic processes that are changing in Antarctica similar to that change in the world.” As the processes Humans do not have advanced krill do chin to take the way, but our destiny is the same attached to small crustaceans. Picture copyright by Christian Aslund -Greenpeace and TIME
Climate change is decimating the chinstrap penguins of Antarctica
