San Jose State researchers from the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories have traveled to Antarctica to learn more about emperor penguins habits and how climate change is affecting them.
The SJSU team, which consisted of Birgitte McDonald, Caitlin Kroeger and Parker Forman, took several trips to Antarctica in 2019 and finished their field work in late 2022.
The team collaborated with researchers from New Zealand to set up camp at Cape Crozier, Antarctica, home to a colony of emperor penguins.
McDonald, physiological and behavioral ecologist and associate professor for the Moss Landing Marine Labs, said this project was dedicated to investigating how emperor penguins save and expend energy while foraging their ecology along with their habitat use.
“With current climate predictions, most emperor penguin colonies are predicted to be unviable by 2100,” McDonald said. “To predict how the penguins may respond to climate change, we must have information on foraging behavior and habitat use.”
The field work the SJSU team has done in Antarctica is part of a larger five-year project led by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
The project is aimed towards studying the effectiveness of the Ross Sea, a stretch of ocean off the coast of Antarctica, as a designated Marine Protected Area.
Researchers attached high frequency transmitters and GPS tags to the outer feathers of the penguins to collect the needed data.
Researchers called the process “big hug.”
To start, researchers sat at a distance from the colony and observed the penguins.
Marine science masters student Parker Forman said the penguins would meet his team with curiosity, sometimes approaching the researchers and looking at them for a bit before waddling off.
After spending some time observing from a distance, researchers slowly approach any penguin that comes close enough.
One person would gently embrace the penguin while another put a custom-made hood over the penguin's head.
Once the hood is on, Forman said the penguin enters a state of calm during which researchers are able to take their measurements, including flipper length and weight.
After the tracking transmitters and tags are applied, the hood is removed and the penguin is released to go about its normal activities.
Forman said the transmitters and GPS devices are essential to the research.
He said, after the transmitters are on, the penguins go out to sea for about 10 days on average.
During this time, they capture prey to give to their young.
The researchers' transmitter device beeps when the penguins are back in the area, signaling that it’s time for them to go and repeat the process to weigh it and remove the data loggers from the penguin’s feathers.
Once the tagged penguins returned and the devices used to track them were retrieved, researchers would begin sorting through the information collected.
"That’s when the real work starts," Forman said. "We have to process all the data from the tags, which takes years."
The researchers have found the penguins gained around 3.5 pounds on average after going out to sea.
Forman said it is quite remarkable considering the fact that the creatures only weigh about 50 pounds.
The researchers also found that the penguins traveled farther than expected.
Forman said one penguin in 2019 swam for 16 days, traveling over 1,000 km (621 miles).
"It’s the equivalent of this penguin traveling from SJSU all the way down to LA and back just to feed its chick,” Forman said.
He said on average, emperor penguins swim about 35 miles per day and dive to almost 500 meters.
"All that information is key for us to better understand what they're doing at sea, how much food they're capturing," Forman said.
McDonald said climate change has serious consequences for emperor penguins.
The birds were listed as a threatened species in late 2022, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website.
Forman said this is because they are an ice-obligant species and climate change is disrupting ice dynamics in the penguins' habitats.
He said the ice formations that are changing are critical to parts of the penguins' breeding cycle.
McDonald and her team of researchers are continuing their work in Antarctica, and they are now researching the post molt foraging ecology and habitat use of emperor penguins.
“In order to best protect [emperor penguins] and develop appropriate policy, we must know more about their behavior and ecology,” McDonald said.
She said the data they collect at Cape Crozier will help them “develop and apply methods which can measure long-term changes in the marine protected area."
