It is a species very threatened by global warming. British scientists announced on Friday that they had identified a new colony of emperor penguins in Antarctica using satellite images of the continent.
The research team spotted the colony of 500 members thanks to the dark spots clearly visible from space made by the excrement of these animals on the ice floe, details the British Antarctic Survey, a British research organization, in a press release. This new colony brings to 66 the number of groups of emperor penguins identified along the Antarctic coastline, half of which have now been spotted thanks to satellite images.
“It is an exciting discovery (…) but, if it represents good news (…), this colony is small and in a region very affected by the melting of the pack ice”, indicated Professor Peter Fretwell, having led these research for the British Antarctic Survey.
Threatened species
The emperor penguin, the largest penguin species that lives and breeds only in Antarctica, was recently listed as an endangered species by the US wildlife authority. Global warming and the melting of the sea ice threaten the penguin’s breeding grounds, while the acidification of the oceans threatens certain varieties of crustaceans on which it feeds.
Scientists estimate that at the current rate of global warming, almost all emperor penguins could be extinct by the end of the century. Scientists worked on this project to identify penguin colonies using a satellite mission developed under the European climate change program Copernicus.