Drone surveys reveal growing pressure on Antarctic penguin colonies

A Chinese researcher who spent part of a 160-day Antarctic expedition surveying penguin colonies by drone has warned that climate change and shifts in the food web are placing growing pressure on the continent's penguin populations.

Liang Qi, an associate professor at Sun Yat-sen University's School of Geospatial Engineering and Science in Guangzhou, conducted more than 60 drone flights over penguin breeding grounds on Adelie Island as part of China's 42nd Antarctic expedition, which returned to Shanghai earlier this month aboard the polar icebreaker Xuelong.

The fieldwork was designed to address limitations in satellite-based monitoring, which Liang said struggles with penguin identification, fine habitat characterization, and population inference due to weak algorithm generalization and a shortage of ground-level validation data. Drones, operating at close range and unaffected by the weather constraints that hamper satellites, allowed Liang to accurately identify and count individual penguin nests, a key indicator of breeding population size and future population trends.

The drone flights yielded visible light, multispectral thermal infrared, and LiDAR data across multiple penguin habitats. Liang also conducted ground-based scanning to measure penguin morphology, sometimes hiking 20 kilometers through Antarctic terrain to reach colonies for spectral measurements and manual population counts.

On the climate side, Liang said sea ice loss was increasing breeding pressure on emperor penguins, which depend on stable ice for chick rearing. Rising ocean temperatures have pushed Antarctic krill — the penguins' primary food source — toward higher latitudes, lengthening adult foraging distances and raising energy costs during the breeding season.

Antarctica's four most common penguin species — emperor, Adelie, chinstrap, and Gentoo —have a combined population of roughly tens of millions, Liang said. He added that the final data analysis from the expedition remains ongoing.

Liang called for a large-scale, high-frequency monitoring network using satellites and drones to track penguin population trends, alongside efforts to slow ocean warming and stabilize Antarctic sea ice.

Hu Xiaotong contributed to this story.