Penguin Migration Tracking

All Migrating Penguins

Will this year’s penguins reach the same latitude as the penguins from 2024 by the end of the migratory season? Was 2023’s shorter migration typical, or atypical? These are the types of questions we can start to answer by continuing our long term monitoring study of penguins. Help us continue our studies by donating to the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels.

Tracking Migration of Magellanic Penguins

Thanks to the generous funding by Zoo Augsburg in Germany, we’ve been able to research Magellanic penguin migration over the past 4 years. This year, Pearl Wellington and Dr. Eric Wagner attached archival GPS-tracking tags to 16 Magellanic penguins for their fall migration, to supplement the migration data from previous trips and investigate interannual variation in migratory behavior.

The overall goal of the study is to determine where penguins spend the austral fall and winter, and where they might come into conflict with fishing, shipping, or pollution. Former Center postdoctoral researcher Tasha Gownaris showed that more females than males die at sea during the winter. Learning whether females and males migrate to the same locations can help us understand why, and help inform policies to protect the females.