Krill Spill: An opportunistic approach to collecting penguin diet and krill length data

Over time there has been a general decline in the collection of penguin diet composition data through the A8 parameter of the CEMP program, due to concerns surrounding the invasive nature of the methods. A pilot study was conducted at Esperanza Station for the 2017/18 season to consider opportunistic data collection methods as an alternate approach. Data on diet composition and krill length were obtained from collecting samples of ‘krill spill’, which comes from regurgitation during chick feeding. The krill length frequency of the krill spill sample was compared to data collected utilising the A8 standard methods. While the length frequencies were similar, more opportunistic data must be collected alongside A8 monitoring efforts to ensure that krill spill samples accurately represent data collected using the standard diet sampling procedures.