A new emperor penguin colony has been discovered in Antarctica using satellite mapping technology, scientists have said. The newly-discovered colony, announced to mark Penguin Awareness Day, brings the total number of known emperor penguin breeding sites around the coastline of Antarctica to 66, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said.
The site, identified by penguin guano – or poo – stains which are brown and easy to spot against the snow and rock, is at Verleger Point, West Antarctica, and has around 500 birds. The scientists studied images from the European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission which were compared to and confirmed by high resolution images from the MAXAR WorldView3 satellite.
Dr Peter Fretwell, lead author of the research that made the find, said that while it was “exciting”, the colony is small and in a region badly affected by recent sea ice loss.
