Figure 1.
Eastern emperor penguin colony.
Aerial view of the eastern emperor penguin colony (67°19′S, 145°52′E) showing adults and chicks present on November 1st, 2012. Photograph by Robin Cristofari, from an altitude of ca. 1,000 feet.
Figure 2.
Eastern emperor penguin colony.
A. Location of the eastern colony (67°19′S, 145°52′E) on the sea-ice at the time of our visit and previous locations of the colony on top of icebergs, ca. 10 m high, covered with guano (arrow). B & C. Layers of droppings (arrows) covered by several layers of snow indicate abundant snow-covered episodes during the breeding season. Photographs by Robin Cristofari.
Figure 3.
Western emperor penguin colony.
Aerial view of the western emperor penguin colony (67°14′S, 145°30′E) showing adults and chicks present on November 2nd, 2012. Photograph by Robin Cristofari, from an altitude of ca. 1,000 feet.
Table 1.
2012 census of the Mertz emperor penguin colonies.
Figure 4.
Satellite images of the Mertz Glacier.
Circle area is proportional to colony size. Continent is on top, open sea at the bottom. A. Estimated location of the Mertz emperor penguin colony on November 13th, 2009 (red circle) on the eastern flank of the Glacier tongue. A large crack in the Mertz Glacier is visible (red arrow). The green circle corresponds to Pointe Géologie colony. B. Location of the two new colonies of emperor penguins on December 3rd, 2012 (blue circles), 2 years after the 2010 calving of the Glacier tongue. The berg (overall length of 80 km and a width of 40 km) broke off the Mertz Glacier after being rammed by another iceberg. The green circle corresponds to Pointe Géologie colony. Images downloaded from the USGS website (https://lta.cr.usgs.gov).