Meet Australia's next generation of scientists: penguins

Updated

Human researchers are hoping Phillip Island little penguins will help reveal what is happening out in the oceans off Australia's south-east.

A team from Monash University and Phillip Island Nature Park are attaching sensors on the little seabirds to shed light on what happens at sea, using some fairly common technology.

"We put a GPS — the same as you have in your car — and we use this Fitbit chip to measure how much energy they're using or how hard the penguins are working when they go at sea," Phillip Island Nature Park penguin biologist Andre Chiaradia explains.

It is the first time scientists will truly get an overall view of how the penguins are interacting with their ecosystem.

"We haven't had a big picture before because sampling is so difficult and it's a big area to cover," Associate Professor Richard Reina says.

"So by using the birds, who know where to go and what to look for, we save ourselves the time and effort of having to do it."

Understanding the ocean environments of south-east Australia is crucial. Scientists say temperatures are rising faster there than almost anywhere else in the world.

"The reason understanding changes in the marine ecosystem is important is that some organisms are highly flexible and able to change and respond," Associate Professor Reina says.

"Penguins are a good example of that, they can change where and when they feed, when they breed and so on.

"Others are not so flexible and are much more tied into predictable patterns."

How does it work?

At night, the penguins are funnelled up through a special weighbridge that acts like a toll collector.

"This is really the heart of the project because it identifies every single penguin as they come into the colony and as they leave the colony," Associate Professor Reina says.

"We know who it is, when they go in and out and how much they weigh. Because if they're out at sea foraging, we can understand how much they're eating."

Now — thanks to DNA testing — researchers can find out exactly what they are eating as well.

It is a far less invasive, instead of forcing the penguins regurgitate their food, scientists can now just sample the poo.

We know that the environment is changing... and this is a really critical time that we need to understand what that's doing for food for penguins and the food web in general PhD student Cathy Cavallo

PhD student Cathy Cavallo said it had already turned up some interesting results, showing that they had been eating jellyfish and salps.

"We can pretty easily work out whether the food that's available to them right now is good enough for what they need — or whether that's going to be affected by climate change or by fisheries or anything like that," she said.

"So it gives us a really good idea of the seasonality of their food and what times and what areas we might need to protect to make sure there's food security for the penguins into the future.

"We know that the environment is changing... and this is a really critical time that we need to understand what that's doing for food for penguins and the food web in general.

"With the number of jellyfish we're seeing — if that's not something they've fed on heavily in the past then maybe that's an indication that the fish that they need to be feeding on or the krill or squid aren't around and available in those numbers that they were before."

To complete the survey, the chicks are weighed to find out how much of the food their parents are bringing back to the burrow is actually regurgitated to the babies.

As these chicks grow up, the knowledge of their behaviour will prove crucial — not just for their protection — but for the conservation of our oceans.

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Topics: birds, animal-science, science-and-technology, oceans-and-reefs, environment, climate-change, vic

First posted