When Dr. Heather Lynch, currently a Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, saw satellite images of what appeared to be guano stained rocks on Danger Island, Antarctica, she new a closer look was necessary.  She new that the pinkish red stain apparent in the images captured in 2014 were from penguins.  It was also previously known that Adélie penguins inhabited the area called the “Thumb” of Antarctica.  The question was how many penguins were living there.

The Danger Islands are a small group of islands off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.  They were named The Danger Islands by James Clark Ross when he discovered them peeking out of blocks of ice in 1842 because they were almost impossible to reach without facing extreme peril.  The islands have continued to be difficult to navigate which is why we have such limited data on the inhabitants of this hostile environment.  There have been attempts to take a census of penguin populations there, but none have been very accurate as Dr. Lynch would soon find out.

Dr. Lynch received her A.B from Princeton and her M.A from Harvard, both in physics.  She decided to change direction and focus to statistical ecology for which she received her PhD in 2006.  As found in her bio from her current employer, Stony Brook, “Dr. Lynch’s research focuses on the development and application of statistics and mathematics to conservation biology.”  Between her physics background and her PhD work, Dr. Lynch was perfectly poised to take a proper census of the penguins living in The Danger Islands.

There was just one main problem.  How to gain access to the islands safely and effectively without disturbing the penguins living there.  Dr. Lynch and her team traveled to the islands and used a drone to be able to create a census of the penguin population.  But it couldn’t be just any drone for the job.  They needed a drone that could fly in harsh winds and extreme cold temperatures.  Beyond that they needed a drone that would be able to navigate in an area that has a different magnetic pull than the rest of the world because of the island’s proximity to the Southern Pole.  Hanumant Singh, one of Dr. Lynch’s co-researchers pointed out that they did have one problem with their drones, the batteries would freeze up!  They found a way around it though by using their own body heat and zipping the batteries up inside their coats!

The drones proved to be just the right tool to get the job done.  Dr. Lynch was amazed at the accuracy they provided.  Previously researchers would rely on images taken from planes flying over or satellites.  However these were never very clear, especially since the penguins blend in with the rocky environment.  The images taken by the drone were crystal clear though.  “The drone imagery is of a quality that just blows everything else away,” said Dr. Lynch, “You can see each penguin on the landscape.”  And the number of mated penguin pairs Dr. Lynch and her team were able to count blew their minds away.  They found 750,000 mated pairs which translates to 1.5million individual penguins.

This discovery led to a lot of other research topics like how is it that this huge, previously hidden colony of Adélie penguins is thriving while the other Adélie colonies seem to be floundering.  Could it be something in the ocean food source or the fact that The Danger Islands are inaccessible?  Could it be because of climate change?  These are all thing that Dr. Lynch is working to answer.