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PenguinTracker / Colonies / Hollin/Midgley

Hollin/Midgley

Penguin breeding site · Wilkes Land · CCAMLR 58.4.1

Hollin/Midgley is a known penguin breeding site in the Wilkes Land, at 66°20'S 110°24'E. Adélie penguins have been recorded here.

RegionWilkes Land
CCAMLR subarea58.4.1
Species recorded1
Sea ice within 100 km339 days a year, median
Site codeMIDG
Position66°20'S 110°24'E
Decimal-66.3259, 110.4036
Distance to pole2,632 km
Populationnot published — see below

Species recorded here

Adélie penguinPygoscelis adeliae

The sea around this site, 1979–2024

0901802703661979 · 355 days1980 · 312 days1981 · 352 days1982 · 320 days1983 · 303 days1988 · 329 days1989 · 319 days1990 · 333 days1991 · 332 days1992 · 353 days1993 · 339 days1994 · 365 days1995 · 364 days1996 · 359 days1997 · 340 days1998 · 343 days1999 · 296 days2000 · 349 days2001 · 290 days2002 · 319 days2003 · 355 days2004 · 343 days2005 · 354 days2006 · 312 days2007 · 316 days2008 · 344 days2009 · 328 days2010 · 283 days2011 · 301 days2012 · 332 days2013 · 327 days2014 · 339 days2015 · 347 days2016 · 339 days2017 · 348 days2018 · 345 days2019 · 360 days2020 · 314 days2021 · 354 days2022 · 263 days2023 · 278 days198019851990199520002005201020152020DAYS A YEAR WITH SEA ICE OVER 15% WITHIN 100 KM · PALE BARS ARE ICE YEARS THE COVERAGE GATE DROPS
One bar per ice year, 15 February to 14 February. Fixed 0–366 axis.

Averaged over the 26 ocean cells within 100 km, this site carries sea ice for a median of 339 days a year, peaking at a median 92.2% concentration. The fitted change is -3.4 ± 6.1 days per decade, which does not clear its own error bars: no detectable change, and that is the answer rather than a gap.

16 other known breeding sites lie within 200 km of this one, and the cells this measurement averages over reach 100 km — so this record and theirs are not independent readings of the sea. Thinned so that no two overlap, the 728 measurable sites in this archive become 56 places.

In the 2023 ice year — the last one this archive holds — the sea ice here lasted 278 days, which is this site's 2nd shortest season of 41 and below its own median of 339. It was below the median at 657 of the 728 sites measured here and at 44 of the 56 independent places, which is the most widespread short season in the record: the whole archive is drawn in one frame.

Two limits. This is the sea around the site and never the fast ice on it — at 25 km that is invisible. And the archive ends 2024-12-31, so it is a climate record rather than a current reading.

Why there is no count on this page

Penguins are too small to resolve from orbit. What is visible is the guano stain a colony leaves on the ice, which is why counting from satellite is a colour problem rather than a counting problem — and it is not solved. Our own detector correlates at r = −0.16 against ground counts across eight colonies, which is no relationship at all. Until that is fixed, this site publishes locations and says nothing about numbers. A number we cannot defend would be worse than none.

Nearest breeding sites

Nearest stations

60°SHOLLIN/MIDGLEY
Hollin/Midgley in Antarctic Polar Stereographic. Rings are 60°, 70° and 80°S.
Shirley/BeallBunger OasisN280 KM
Within 561 km. Blue dots are other breeding sites, orange are stations.