Fri Jan 13 2012

ABOARD THE AURORA AUSTRALIS, Southern Ocean, Jan 13 AAP - The cute and inquisitive Adelie penguin is a well-known camera magnet in the Antarctic, waddling about or tobogganing on the ice to the delight of tourists.

Now Australian scientists studying the birds hope that automatic cameras spying on their rookeries will help assess their breeding success and provide a warning of any threats to their welfare from climate change or krill fishing.

Such cameras are already taking daily pictures at the nesting sites near the three Australian Antarctic stations of Mawson, Davis and Casey, but researchers want to see an international network of such camera recorders across Antarctica.

Australian Antarctic Division ecologist Colin Southwell, who is on a marine science voyage aboard the icebreaker Aurora Australis, says there are probably more than 10 million Adelie penguins around the southern continent.

But he says there's been an observed decline in Adelie and Chinstrap penguin numbers on the Antarctic Peninsula off the tip of South America, along with a significant decline there in krill, one of their main food sources.

The major krill fisheries operate off the peninsula but it's also an area of observed sea ice decline, put down to the effects of climate change.

"Sea ice is a krill habitat so it's thought if the sea ice is reduced there's less habitat for krill so there's less food for the penguins," Dr Southwell told AAP.

He said Adelie numbers in east Antarctica, where there is no krill fishing at present, appeared to be rising but it was important to monitor penguin populations there over the long term so future threats to their wellbeing could be pinpointed.

"Cameras will give us an idea of breeding success, with daily photographs allowing us to count nests at the beginning of the season and the number of chicks at the end of the season."

The cameras, fitted with solar panels, could operate over a number of years and save the expense of researchers observing birds on site, Dr Southwell said.

He said if poor breeding success or changed breeding patterns were observed that could not be explained by natural causes, they might be linked to reduced food availability caused by the overfishing of krill or to climate change impacts such as reduced ice cover.

Climate change was changing breeding patterns in many species across the world, Dr Southwell said.
If overfishing of krill was identified as a threat to penguins, fishing quotas could be imposed through the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to which more than 30 countries subscribe, including Australia.

Dr Southwell said krill was also an important food source for seals, whales and other predators but they were not as easy to monitor as Adelie penguins, which were an indicator species when it came to threats such as overfishing and climate change impacts.

He said it was hoped the camera monitoring concept would be taken up by CCAMLR.

The Australian Antarctic Division had given two penguin-watching cameras to French and US researchers to trial them on the Antarctic Peninsula in a bid to promote their expanded use.

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