The Danger Islands
If you look hard enough, you can see penguin poop from space. Penguins eat a lot of krill, which has a red hue. When you put a lot of penguins together, it can be pretty bright.
From space, the Danger Islands
looked like they had a lot of penguins
Getting Ready
We hired a ship, the Hans Hansson from the Falkland Islands, captained by Antarctic legend Dion Poncet.
And sailed for 3 days across the Drake Passage.
We got a quick idea of what we had to grapple with - Heroina Island is covered in Adelie penguins
Each island had its own topography - Earle Island was mostly flat and covered in mud and boulders.
Beagle Island has steep cliff shores and curious algae mats.
Comb island was the strangest. A razor's edge ridge of striated rock. The opposite side is covered in penguin nests
The Team
(L-R, B-F) Alex Borowicz, Casey Youngflesh, Phil McDowall, Tom Hart, Thomas Sayre-McCord, Gemma Clucas, Mike Polito, Steve Forrest, Melissa Rider, [Rachael Herman]
The Team
Results
1.5 million nesting Adelie penguins. More than the rest of the Antarctic Peninsula combined. Hiding in plain sight.
Our published work
In which we count penguins by hand and with a drone and find out that there are a lot.
In which we dig pits and find old penguin bits and discover that the colonies have been around for hundreds of years.