Super colony

Bridget Brelet

When we think of penguins, we usually think of the cute cuddle animal we all wish we could have as a pet. The one thing we never think of when we think of penguins is the word, extinct. The Adelie penguins were on the verge of going extinct until a discovering was found on an expedition led by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). These researchers were on a trip to Antarctica, and not just any part of Antarctica but the Danger Islands. The Danger Islands are a remote handful of rocks huddled among sheets of treacherous sea ice near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. When one researcher noticed that these rocks had poop stains all over them they started to research the feces and found out that it was indeed Adelie penguin poop. When the researchers dug a little deeper on the island they came across hundreds and thousands of Adelie penguins. These types of penguins were on the endangered species list and these researchers had just found the largest population of these penguins to ever exist, about 1.5 million birds to be exact. "The population of Adelie’s on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula is different from what we see on the west side," study co-author Stephanie Jenouvrier, a seabird ecologist at WHOI, said in the statement. "Is it linked to the extended sea ice condition over there? Food availability? That's something we don't know.” People do not know how these birds got to the Danger Island but I am sure I am not alone when I say I am glad that these birds are no longer on the verge of going extinct. 

https://www.livescience.com/61908-hidden-penguin-supercolony.html