Penguins' sex life perks up with visits

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Baby penguins survive better if their parents are disturbed by humans, according to a surprising new study.

Waikato University biologists Dr Nick Ling and Associate Professor Joe Waas told the New Zealand Antarctic Conference at the university yesterday that they tested the effects of tourists on Adelie penguins in Antarctica by deliberately disturbing 16 penguin colonies by walking through them up to twice a day.

Surprisingly, they found that the survival rate of penguin chicks was the highest in the colonies that were disturbed the most, and the lowest in the ones that were not disturbed at all.

"So maybe tourism is good," Dr Ling said.

He showed a video of the penguins cavorting around his legs as he walked through their colony, suggesting that perhaps the presence of humans excited the penguins so they had more successful sex.

But more likely, he said, the scientists were scaring away the skuas, or Antarctic seagulls, that might otherwise have swooped on the penguin nests and eaten their chicks.

"It is possible we are keeping the skuas away and reducing predators for the birds because our disturbance is making the birds more protective and therefore protecting them from the skua predators," he said.

He said the issue was important because tourism was rising rapidly in Antarctica. More than 13,000 visited last year, mainly from cruise ships.

Although the tourists are told to keep their distance from penguin colonies, they are allowed to get close to individual birds if the penguins walk out towards them, as they often do. As well as tourists, the colonies are disturbed by a growing number of biologists and "scientific tourists" on recreational visits while they are in Antarctica for other projects.

"Antarctic tourism is likely to increase significantly in the next few years," Dr Ling said.

"If you monitor their heart rate and approach the penguins, their heart rate skyrockets. We don't know the long-term effects of that."

The Waikato team is observing the effects over three years by simply observing the penguins' behaviour, monitoring their reproductive success, and taking blood and faecal samples to test their hormone levels.

Thousands of individual behavioural incidents have been coded into a computer and are now being studied for significant patterns.

The team will return in the next two summers to repeat their observations.