Tracking Little Penguins at Kangaroo Island

Some of Liz's friends at Kangaroo Island have been selected to be involved in a tracking project to see where they forage. Bill and Bella have neighbouring burrows in the Kingscote colony and they were both chosen to carry a satellite tracker for a short while. You can keep track of where Bill and Bella have been fishing as well as other penguins in the near future at Seaturtle Tracking Online.

 

Background to the project

Little penguin populations in the Encounter Bay and Kangaroo Island area have been declining in recent years (Bool et al. 2006). In this region there is a growing concern amongst local communities, managers, researchers and tour operators that some of these colonies may decline further or disappear. Little is currently known about the threats causing the declines. Penguins spend half their time at sea, so an understanding of at-sea behaviour is essential to answering this.

In recent years, little penguins have been successfully tracked in South Australia using satellite trackers. Results showed that breeding penguins foraged between 5-100km from their colonies (A. Wiebkin). Penguins have not been tracked around the Kangaroo Island area, and we currently have little knowledge of where these birds forage, or whether feeding grounds are currently impacted by human activities, such as high marine traffic or fishing.

The Encounter Penguin Management Group (with representatives from DEH-KI, NRM-KI, Granite Island Nature Park, Penneshaw Penguin Colony, Kingscote Penguin Colony, NRM-Adelaide and Mt Loft Ranges, DEH-Victor Harbour, SARDI and local community members) has identified a need for a region-wide monitoring program to collect baseline data on population sizes, trends and penguin ecology so that the colonies can be best managed in the future. One of the priority areas identified by the group is an understanding of where little penguins forage in the area.

The aim of this project is to determine the main foraging locations of little penguins at Kangaroo and possibly Granite Islands and to identify hotspots of foraging activity. In September, we placed two satellite trackers on little penguins at Kangaroo Island. Follow the link at Seaturtle Tracking Online and click on "Bella" or "Bill" to see the tracks of two little penguins as they forage from the Kingscote colony on Kangaroo Island. One tracker unfortunately stopped working when the bird (Bill) reached the middle of lower Gulf St Vincent. The other bird (Bella) fed in the same area suggesting that this area is providing good fishing for most of the adult birds that have chicks in their burrows back at Kingscote. She then headed up towards Troubridge Island where another large colony lives. She finally headed home after 12 days. We now hope to put Bella's tracker on other birds in the colony and also at Penneshaw and then maybe Granite Island if we can get new batteries this season.

This project is being lead by KI-NRM in collaboration with KI-DEH, SARDI Aquatic Sciences, and volunteers from the Kingscote Penguin Centre.

The project is funded by the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife.

GPO Box 2666, Sydney NSW Australia 2001
P 02 9221 1949
F 02 9233 3615
W www.fnpw.org.au