More about Adélie penguins

Adélie penguins live in one of the world’s harshest environments, with temperatures reaching -40^oc. They can swim up to 4 metres per second and dive to depths of up to 180m.

Location: Antarctic – within the Antarctic Circle

Habitat: Sea ice along the coast and surrounding islands

Wild population: Approximately 2.5 million pairs in 160 colonies

The threats to Adélie penguins

• Climate change. Rising global temperatures mean parts of the sea ice are melting, taking away precious nesting grounds and affecting vital food sources such as krill - tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that feed off algae found on the underside of ice sheets.

How your adoption can help:

• £330 could pay for a reusable Time-depth-recorder, which tracks a penguin when it’s diving at sea
• £50 could give scientists callipers to measure penguin beaks and wing rulers – both of which help find out a penguin’s sex and age.
• £36 (or £3 a month) could buy transponders with unqiue IDs for tracking nine penguins during their whole life
• £10 could help scientists sampling to determine the gender of one penguin
• £80 could contribute towards a VHF marine radio handset to ensure the safety of researchers in the field
• £60 (or £5 a month) could pay for aircraft time to access remote penguin colonies

The penguins of Adélie land

You can adopt five Adélie penguins – a mix of male and female individuals from a colony of 500-600 at the Dumont d’Urville base on Pointe Géologie archipelago, in an area of the Antarctic known as Adélie land. We are monitoring the colony to find out how they are adapting to climate change.