“We all know that the world is changing, and that change will have dramatic effects on biodiversity and on ecosystems, especially in very remote areas, like Antarctica,” says Daniel P. Zitterbart, principal investigator of the Marine Animal Remote Sensing Lab. Some experts have predicted that Emperor penguins could be
Over 30 years, MARE will assess the vulnerability of Antarctic ecosystems by following population dynamics of Emperor penguins. These birds are an iconic animal of Antarctica, but “in contrast to what people think, the Emperor penguin is a species very poorly studied,” says, a researcher at the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, who is a research partner and ecologist on MARE. “So any data, especially from the sea, is exciting and precious.
The MARE team is trying to gather information with minimum disturbance to the birds and the colony. But, currently, the researchers have to physically capture and tag the birds on their backs. The tags are a Passive Integrated Transponder and Radio-Frequency Identification system—which works the same way as the microID chips in pet dogs. The only way to retrieve the data from those tags is by getting close enough to the birds to rescan the device, says Zitterbart.
That’s why Zitterbart’s team relies on remote sensing technologies that don’t require researchers to physically be in the field. While satellites can survey sea surface temperatures, wind, ice cover, and other physical parameters, they are not as good at monitoring food chains and species dynamics in ecosystems. Instead, the MARE researchers use camera systems, land antennas, and autonomous vehicles, like ECHO.