This dataset consists of two shapefiles created by Darren Southwell of the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) by digitising the boundaries of adelie penguin colonies at the Rauer Group and the Vestfold Hills. The digitising was done from images resulting from the scanning and georeferencing of aerial photographs taken on 24 November 1993. The aerial photographs were taken for the AAD with a Linhof camera. Records of the photographs are included in the Australian Antarctic Data Centre's Aerial Photograph Catalogue.

Ship-based observations of birds, seals and whales from the original 'ANARE Bird Log' books have been recovered into a single repository of sightings and associated abiotic information. ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) is the historic acronym for these voyages. A few voyages have been included that were not part of ANARE but have Australian observers or volunteer observers. Voyages start from the 1947/48 austral season up to 1982/83 with an average of 3 voyages per season. There are a few voyages where there is no data. It is not known if either no bird observations were undertaken during this period or that the bird logs exist if observations were undertaken. Current counts are birds, seals and whales Observing platforms include the following ships - Wyatt Earp, Tottan, River Fitzroy, Norsel, Kista Dan, Thala Dan, Magga Dan, Nella Dan, Lady Franklin and Nanok S and a single voyage from the private yacht Solo. The quality and quantity of abiotic data associated with observations such as air temperature, sea ice cover etc vary immensely from voyage to voyage. Where possible this data has been entered. This dataset contains very little information on estimates of survey effort and cannot be used to derive useful presence/absence spatial coverages of species during this period. It is purely sighting data only.

Seabird surveys in January - March 2006 of a poorly known area of the Southern Ocean adjacent to the East Antarctic coast identified six seabird communities, several of which were comparable to seabird communities identified both in adjacent sectors of the Antarctic, and elsewhere in the Southern Ocean. These results support previous proposals that the Southern Ocean seabird community is characterised by an ice-associated assemblage and an open-water assemblage, with the species composition of the assemblages reflecting local (Antarctic-resident) breeding species, and the migratory routes and feeding areas of distant-breeding taxa, respectively. Physical environmental covariates such as sea-ice cover, distance to continental shelf and time of year influenced the distribution and abundance of seabirds observed, but the roles of these factors in the observed spatial and temporal patterns in seabird assemblages was confounded by the duration of the survey. Occurrence of a number of seabird taxa exhibited significant correlations with krill densities at one or two spatial scales, but only three taxa (Arctic tern, snow petrel and dark shearwaters, i.e. sooty and short-tailed shearwaters) showed significant correlations at a range of spatial scales. Dark shearwater abundances showed correlations with krill densities across the range of spatial scales examined. This work was conducted on the BROKE-West voyage of the Aurora Australis.

As seabirds emperor penguins spent a large proportion of their lives at sea. For food they depend entirely on marine resources. Young penguins rarely return to their natal colonies after their first year. Satellite tracking will give us insights into where foraging areas may be that are important for these birds. This tracking work is part of a multi-species study funded by the Integrated Marine Observation System (IMOS). These data are from penguins from the Amanda Bay area, and for the 2012-13 season.

The only work that went ahead as part of this ASAC project was to look at Penguins restraint and stress level (see the referenced paper below). From the paper: During most research on penguins it is necessary to temporarily immobilise the birds at some time (to weigh, mark, or attach instruments). Although many penguin species seem unconcerned about a human's presence, a single approaching person has been shown to increase the birds heart rate, suggesting that the animal is aware and may be stressed. Corticosterone is one of the hormones regulating the stress reaction in birds, and in turn regulates that stress caused by immobilisation. As captured and bag restrained Adelie penguins show a three fold increase in heart rate, we can presume that this is a very stressful immobilisation technique. Restricting the stress reaction is particularly important during the breeding season to avoid nest desertion, or loss of eggs and chicks. The subject of this paper is to present a less stressful method for restraining penguins. 38 mature, male Gentoo penguins in good physical condition were used to test bag restraint methods. Resting animals were caught on the Macquarie Island Isthmus. 59 animals were used to test the effect of hood restraint methods. There was a significant increase in corticosterone concentrations in the blood of bag restrained penguins within 10 minutes of restraint. Between 10 and 15 minutes, further changes were not significant. After 20 minutes, however, there was a second significant increase, when compared to the levels at 15 minutes. Upon release all birds were unconscious; they then showed symptoms of hysteria, such as disorientation and shaking of the head. Corticosterone levels in the blood of hooded penguins rose significantly after 5 minutes. After 10 minutes, the mean concentration showed a tendency to decrease, when compared to the 5 minute levels. This, however, did not differ significantly to concentrations immediately after restraint. After 20 minutes concentrations rose again, and were again significantly higher than at the same time of restraint and after 15 minutes. Both groups showed the same levels of corticosterone upon restraint. Hood restraint led overall to a lower increase in corticosterone levels than restraint with a bag. After 5, 10, 15 and 20 minutes, statistically significant lower levels in the blood were detected in hood restrained birds. The penguin's reaction to both restraint methods was identical in two respects: There was no significant increase in corticsterone concentration between 10 and 15 minutes. Secondly, concentrations were significantly higher after 20 minutes than at 15 minutes.

Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme Bird Banding records from the Australian Antarctic Territory and Heard Island, a subset of banding and recovery records from within Australian Antarctic Territory and Heard Island. The Australian Government under the auspices of the Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme (ABBBS) manages the collation of information on threatened and migratory bird and bat species. The information provided spans from 1953 to the present, and contains over 2 million records. This set comprises records of banding and recovery in the Australian Antarctic territory. Records are also included if the bird was recovered or banded outside this region. The ABBBS site is at http://www.environment.gov.au/science/bird-and-bat-banding.

The dataset comprises Adelie penguin colony boundaries derived from oblique aerial photographs taken towards the end of the 2014/15 summer between Mawson and Taylor Glacier. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to AAT coastline polygon data and the boundaries of Adelie penguin colonies were digitised. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

An occupancy survey in January 2011 found a total of 14 islands/sites in Windmill group had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The boundaries of breeding colonies at 11 of the 14 islands were subsequently mapped for abundance surveys. Seven islands were mapped on the ground with GPS: Whitney Point, Blakeney Point, Shirley Island, Odbert Island, Berkley Island, Cameron Island and O'Connor Island between 10 December 2012 to 9 January 2013 ). The buffer distance was reduced to 1-2 m in the shapefiles created from the ground maps. Ground mapping involved circumnavigating the perimeter of sub-colonies on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Legend Cx or Vista C) to log the track taken. The person walking around the sub-colonies maintained a buffer distance of 2-3 m between themselves and the penguins at the sub-colony boundary to minimise disturbance. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

This dataset contains the results from satellite tracking the movements of Adelie Penguins (Pygoscellis adeliae) from Edmonson Point in the Terra Nova Bay region, Antarctica. By the use of satellite fixes the foraging locations of the penguins were determined. Monitoring took place between 1994 and 2001. This work was completed as part of ASAC project 2205 (ASAC_2205), 'Adelie penguin research and monitoring in support of the CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Project'.

Six colonies with breeding Adelie colonies were mapped this season in the Rookery Island group in conjunction with colony counts. Islands 74814 and the main Rookery Island 74721 were not mapped this season. Subcolonies were mapped by circumnavigating the perimeter of sub-colonies on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Legend Cx) to log the track taken. The person walking the perimeter of the sub-colonies maintained a buffer distance of approximately 2.5m between themselves and the breeding birds along the sub-colony boundary. This buffer distance was reduced to approximately 2m in the final shapefiles. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.