But when Fretwell looked at the satellite pictures, he saw few signs of the birds.
“There should have been lots of penguins there, but actually we could only see 25 groups,” he said. Groups vary in size from 10s to up to 1,000 birds.
“Again this year the sea ice hasn’t been too bad, but I can only see a handful of penguins really,” he says.
He fears most have could died. Some may have travelled to another location in East Antarctica to moult, but this would have disrupted breeding, also leading to population losses.
Longer term, the bird’s best chance for survival is to adapt to moult on shallow ice shelves. Fretwell has seen some groups begin to do this, although it may come with a cost to the penguins’ breeding and feeding patterns.