You might think that a bird which makes its home on the frozen Antarctic shores would live a pretty protected life. But it turns out that some penguins wander far enough to put themselves in harm's way. Researchers with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography traveled to Antarctica to attach tiny satellite transmitters to young Emperor penguins, a species which lives on the icy shores of the Ross Sea. The scientists knew that adult penguins spent most of their time in ice-congested waters, where they could rest on ice floes between trips into the water to hunt fish. Their travels took them out of the ice packs and into clear water perilously close to commercial fishing zones.
International treaties protect the rare birds when they're safe at home in Antarctica.
But scientists say those protections may need to be extended to cover fishing areas farther to the north. Coastwatch is a public service of Oregon Sea Grant and this station. But new research suggests that estuaries may actually make the animals which live in them better able to resist poisons. Then he exposed the community to a commonly used insecticide, one that is normally very toxic to the shrimp. But the copepod community survived, and showed no ill effects, even at doses high enough to kill half of the animals in a single-species laboratory test.