Researchers looked at satellite photos and saw that several colonies of emperor penguins suffered loss due to early sea ice loss.
very high probability that most chicks from four out of the five known emperor penguin colonies died in 2022.Researchers monitored five colonies that range from about 630 pairs to over 3,000 penguin pairs. They counted the birds in the colony using satellite imagery from 2018 to 2022. Through those images, they noticed that significant sea ice loss at the central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea occurred before the penguin chicks would have developed their waterproof feathers.
According to the study, emperor penguins need access to stable “land-fast sea ice” for breeding and molting, which is when the penguins lose and regain their feathers. Emperor penguins find their preferred breeding sites in late March to early April. They lay their eggs from May to June. Those eggs hatch chicks after a little over two months. The chicks grow and eventually fledge, or leave the nest, throughout December and January. But if sea ice breaks up earlier than usual, the chicks are too young to survive the unstable conditions.Some of the colonies started to see significant ice loss in late November and into early December, according to the satellite images described in the study.
If you search for a picture of an emperor penguin chick, it’s fuzzy because the baby bird still has its downy plumage. The fluffy feathers are adorable, but they are not suitable for the cold water. These feathers become waterlogged, endangering the chicks if they cannot find stable ground to live on until they are old enough to grow waterproof feathers.
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