Emperor penguin colonies are situated in some of the hardest places on earth to reach, so as you can imagine it is hard to send researchers to study them in person. However given the vast size of the colonies, and the staining of the ice by their droppings, this research can increasingly be done from space.
the new emperor penguin colonies discovered this way boost their numbers but at least 20%.
The new discoveries were made with an upgraded camera that allowed better resolution showing the smaller companies that had been previously missed. There are now 61 known emperor penguin colonies around Antarctica. While this is a lovely big increase from past known numbers, the colonies that are now known about are spread relatively evenly around the coast, which means that while there may be a few small colonies left to be discovered it is unlikely that there will be any big ones left as there isn’t the space.
