A New Penguin Watch 2.0 Uses Cameras To Monitor Penguins

The University of Oxford has launched the new Penguin Watch 2.0, a camera monitoring program to witness the lives of the penguins in Antarctica. It is a website and the leading Antarctic science project all around the world.

Quartz reports that the cameras were erected by the scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the University of Oxford. Their goal is to monitor the Adelie and Chinstrap penguin colonies, which are in danger now because of the climate change. The warming of the Earth has caused the ice to melt. This has lessened the krill population, which are the food source of the penguins.

The researchers want aid from the public by marking the images of adult and baby penguins that are taken by 50 cameras that are set up around the Antarctica. By marking their images, they are able to recognize the penguins and their eggs. There are about hundreds of thousands of images that the researchers need to analyze.

"We cannot do this work on our own, and every penguin that people click on and count in the website--that's all information that tells us what's happening at each nest, and what's happening over time," said Tom Hart, the leader of the team.

According to Daily Mail, the cameras are taking between 8 and 96 photos every day in a year. After the user has tagged the image, he can share it on Twitter or Facebook. There are about 27,000 participants who have helped in the project already and 30,000 photos have been marked.

Penguins are flightless birds that live exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in Antarctica. Penguins eat fish, krill, squid and other sea life creatures under water. They spend their lives half on land and half on the ocean. The penguins have white and counter shaded dark plumage. Their wings have grown into flippers.