The St Kilda penguin year finishes in April, by this time the adults have finished moulting and the chicks have all fledged. During May and June the research team looks at the accumulated data for the year May to April and produces a report on the year’s activities. The data for the tracked penguins will be updated. Sometimes we microchip a penguin and never see it again, sometimes we do not see a penguin for many years.

An important component of the penguin survey is to accurately locate penguins along the 400 metre long breakwater, whether they be captured for analysis or simply sighted and recorded.  The position of a penguin along the breakwater is indicated by letters painted on the rocks spaced exactly 20 metres apart. To further identify the location of the penguin the outer seaward side of the breakwater is location 1, the path along the top 2, and the inside wall has three levels 3,4 and 5. If the penguin is in the water it is recorded as level 6. Thus a penguin could be found at A.6.3 or R.1.5. The original lettering system was from the gate to the end of the breakwater but as the colony expanded into the area from the gate to the kiosk  the new lettering had to be created. The alphabet was changed to lower case on the other side of the gate. Therefore all upper case letters are from the gate to the seaward end of the breakwater and all lower case letters are from the gate to the landward end of the breakwater. To make things easier on the computer all  lower case letters have a Z preceding them.

A penguin found in the landward end of the breakwater could have a location like Zc.5.1  

 

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