Penguin Watch Talk

World Penguin Day (2017 - April 25)

  • wildmonster by wildmonster

    Happy 2017 World Penguin Day! "There are 12 million penguins in Antarctica" and "that's not nearly enough" says a researcher in a news media article published today (April 25, 2017).
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2017/04/25/brrrd-count-penguin-population-antarctica-12-million-report-says/100839574/

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  • AvastMH by AvastMH moderator

    Hello @wildmonster - lovely to see you here again 😄

    Thanks for your message for World Penguin Day 2017 and for the link to the item in USA Today 😃

    The main article does cover the dramatic change in temperatures, and the reducing numbers of Chinstraps, Adelies, and Macaroni penguins. To quote from the article 'The first-ever "State of Antarctic Penguin" report was compiled by Ron Naveen, who has had one job for most of the past two decades: "I count penguins," he said. Once a government lawyer and now described as a 21st century Dr. Dolittle, Naveen has been going to Antarctica for more than 30 years — what amounts to more than six years in real time, and counting penguins for the past 20 years.'

    There's a very short vimeo of Ron Naveen speaking about his passion for counting penguins at this site: https://www.cinemavillage.com/Now-Playing/the-penguin-counters.html 😃

    @Edyflwr kindly sent me another link to that report : http://earthsky.org/earth/world-penguin-day-2017-state-of-antarctic-penguins-report and from here you can access the whole report. I notice that the contributors include Tom Hart, our lead scientist on PenguinWatch.

    The quote above by Ron Naveen made me think of all the hours that must have been spent on PenguinWatch by your good selves. If you spent a minute on each picture, with 5663084 pictures classified, that's 94385 hours, and that's 3933 days, and that's 10.775 years of work since September 2014. Not only that, but you have been training computers to mark penguins too. Two jobs done! 😃

    I found this picture by Katrina Zinger, a passenger with Quark Expeditions who help PenguinWatch. It is so beautiful and, to me, says so much about our fears for beleaguered penguins facing the problems that climate warming causes to the Antarctic ice:

    enter image description here

    Thank you PenguinWatch volunteers, for all your hard work, from the moderators, yshish, gardenmaeve, and AvastMH.

    Best wishes and warm pebbles for your work yet to come! 😃

    ( #socialmedia )

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  • AvastMH by AvastMH moderator

    Working on the Zooniverse projects can be thoroughly engrossing. Mixed with a busy job during the day I'm working up an excuse for not spotting the front page of the Oxford University website yesterday.

    Tom Hart features in a wonderful article to celebrate World Penguin Day (link)

    'To mark World Penguin Day, ScienceBlog talks to Tom Hart, penguinologist at Oxford University, about his team’s massively popular ‘citizen science’ platform, Penguin Watch. Now in its third year, Penguin Watch harnesses technology and people power to help protect this universally loved seabird. Tom discusses the evolution of the initiative and his plans to use automation to take the research to the next level.'

    The blog also mentions Fiona Jones, also on the science team:

    'Over the years our approach to outreach has improved and increased - particularly with schools. We engage much more with children now than we used to. Fiona (Fiona Jones, Penguinologist and PHD student, working with Penguin Watch) does a lot of great work in this area.'

    Great work Fiona! 😄

    I especially liked this quote:

    'The platform [PenguinWatch] has a really nice, dual benefit. From our point of view, we get our penguin data processed, and the general public also get to be a part of the research process. People enjoy being useful - and they are.'

    The article rounds up with one of my pet fears - the human use of krill oil:

    'The easiest way to help is to stop buying krill based products. Penguins feed on krill and expanding krill fishing is having a big impact on their populations. Krill oil supplements, basically alternative Omega 3 vitamins, have become fashionable in wellbeing circles. They are much more popular in places like Australia and China, but you can pick them up in most UK supermarkets too. Please don’t.'

    (I might just add that farmed salmon is only pink because they are fed imported krill. Naturally salmon with no access to krill have white/grey meat.)

    I you would like to see Tom's 3.5 minute talk about PW you can watch it on 'Youtube' (this is the no-advert version for those concerned with co-incidental adverts): https://www.youtube.com/embed/gy6X5mzvLMY 😃

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