Marine Ecologist
Marine Ecologist: A scientist who studies relationships between organisms and their ocean environment. Uses visual surveys, diet analysis, and satellite tracking to collect data on a variety of organisms, including penguins.Chinstrap penguins breed on land in the spring and summer and spend the rest of the year in open water north of the sea ice. The number of chinstraps that successfully breed is much lower in years when the sea ice does not melt until late in the spring.
Chinstraps mostly eat krill, a shrimplike crustacean.
Whalers and sealers overhunted seals and whales, which also eat krill, until the late 1960s.
Chinstraps hunt primarily in open water because they cannot hold their breath for very long.
The main predators of chinstraps are skuas (hawklike birds), leopard seals, and killer whales.
Chinstraps will aggressively displace Adélie penguins from nest sites in order to start their own nests and may compete with Adélies for feeding areas.
Although chinstrap penguins have occupied the western Antarctic Peninsula for over 600 years, they have become numerous near Palmer Station (one of the three U.S. research stations in Antarctica) only in the last 35 years.
