We are designing a new scheme to monitor penguins in Antarctica in much more detail than ever before. Step one relies entirely on showing that cameras can survive the winter. Operating electrical equipment remotely, in logistically difficult places to access, which experience extreme temperatures is challenging for both scientists, and the equipment we use. You will therefore understand our nervousness as we returned to our sites: did our cameras manage to survive the Antarctic winter?

Ben and Tom deploying the first time lapse camera in Salisbury Plain, South Georgia – Jan 2011

Tom has now been able to visit two of our sites on South Georgia, and colleagues from Oceanites, British Antarctic Survey and naturalists on Quark ships have visited the remaining sites on the South Shetland Islands.  We have had some fantastic results. Apart from one camera, all survived the winter! And even that one recorded for four months before it fell over. The results are fantastic and mean that we can expand the network this season around the Antarctic Peninsula.  There are a few examples here, but we’ll put together a time lapse video for the next blog.

The king penguin photos from Salisbury Plain, South Georgia, show three examples of how a colony changes as the season progresses.  These provide us with several different bits of useful information.  We can see when penguins arrived at the site to start breeding, and we can see how many arrive each season.  We can also see how many chicks are around, and get some insight into their behaviour.

One of the behavioural indicators we hope to get from our photos is the timing of crèching (chicks huddling together, which you can see in the third photo) and the size of crèches in relation to weather and temperature patterns. These photos illustrate how we can do this quite well, although we’ll probably use more cameras per colony in future to answer these specific behavioural questions.

One camera was only able to record part of the season, as it was blown off its mount.  The katabatic winds that gust in the regions in which we are monitoring are incredibly strong, reaching speeds well in excess of 100 mph.  We’re working on a more secure mount to ensure this doesn’t happen again.  Or perhaps the camera was knocked off by a marauding fur or elephant seal?  As you can see, they are pretty fierce…

Fierce juvenile Antarctic fur seal