With their endearing waddles, tightly packed huddles that help conserve body heat, and distinctive black-and-white plumage, emperor penguins are among the most recognizable animals on Earth. Recent satellite surveys estimate that hundreds of thousands of these flightless birds occupy 66 colonies scattered along Antarctica’s remote and frozen coastlines.

However, those populations could face significant declines in the decades ahead. Emperor penguins depend heavily on landfast, or fast, ice, which is sea ice firmly attached to the coastline. They use this stable platform for breeding, raising their chicks, and molting.

A Changing Antarctic Ice Environment

Antarctic sea ice remained relatively stable from the late 1970s through 2015, but the overall extent has declined since 2016. Climate projections indicate that this downward trend is likely to continue.

Scientists still have an incomplete understanding of how landfast ice is changing. It remains an active area of research, and available evidence suggests that its trends differ across Antarctica. One study found that landfast ice has decreased in West Antarctica and the Weddell Sea in recent decades, while showing increases in the Bellingshausen Sea and East Antarctica.

Some climate models have projected that emperor penguins could disappear by 2100 if their breeding habitats become unsuitable. In 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service classified the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In 2026, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified emperor penguins as endangered because of climate change.

Severe Breeding Failures Raise Concern

Antarctic sea ice reached a record low in 2022. Following that extreme decline, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey documented what they described as catastrophic breeding failures at several colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea.

Yet newer research provides a more complicated picture. Studies using decades of observations collected by NASA-USGS Landsat satellites suggest that many emperor penguin colonies have survived for decades. The research also indicates that these birds may have greater flexibility in choosing breeding locations than scientists once believed.

For most colonies, scientists previously had very little information about how long they had existed, how their numbers had changed, or how they had responded to earlier disruptions in landfast sea ice.

"There is very little baseline information about what normal conditions look like for most of these colonies," explained Michelle LaRue, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Canterbury. This lack of historical information has made it difficult to predict how their populations might change in the future.

Landsat Reveals the Hidden History of Penguin Colonies

Two studies published in 2026 used decades of Landsat satellite observations to address some of these knowledge gaps. Landsat imagery cannot distinguish individual penguins, but entire colonies can be identified from the large guano stains produced when thousands of birds gather together on the ice.

Researchers from the University of Freiburg used this approach to examine historical colony locations. They discovered that 18 colonies had existed long before scientists officially identified them, with their actual presence predating their initial detection by an average of 17 years.

Because Landsat has repeatedly photographed Antarctica since the early 1980s, the satellite program provides one of the few consistent, long-term records available for remote emperor penguin colonies.

The Long History of the Smyley Island Colony

One of the oldest colonies examined was the Smyley Island colony in the Bellingshausen Sea. The colony, which contains roughly 6,000 birds, has existed since at least 1989, meaning its history extends about two decades further back than scientists previously realized.

Several other colonies were also found to have existed at least 20 years before their earliest previously documented observations. These included colonies at Barrier Bay, Brownson, Luitpold Coast, Ragnhild, Smith, and Verdi Inlet.

Scientists have paid particular attention to Smyley Island in recent years because it appears to have experienced a possible total breeding failure in 2022. Satellite imagery from that year showed the colony separating into different groups, with some penguins moving onto a large iceberg that had become grounded near the coastline.

Despite continued periods of poor sea-ice conditions afterward, the colony has remained visible in satellite imagery. It has generally established itself near icebergs along the edge of the ice shelf. Landsat imagery from December 2025, the most recent month in which the satellite observed the colony, showed that the penguins were still present.

One Bad Breeding Season Does Not Mean the End

LaRue noted that the Smyley Island colony demonstrates a degree of resilience. The birds appear to have recovered from the difficult period, and researchers will continue observing them to better understand how they respond to changing conditions.

The colony’s continued presence illustrates an important point: a single poor breeding season, even one in which breeding completely fails, does not necessarily mean that a colony will disappear.

Severe weather events and predators can also cause individual years of extremely low chick survival. The greater concern arises when breeding failures become frequent and occur repeatedly over consecutive years. In that situation, the population may no longer be able to compensate for the losses.

Penguins Can Shift Their Breeding Locations

A second 2026 study, led by Grant Macdonald, a remote-sensing scientist at Durham University, provided additional evidence that emperor penguins can adjust their behavior when their usual breeding sites are disrupted.

Macdonald and his colleagues examined nearly four decades of observations from Landsat, NASA’s Terra satellite, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, known as ASTER, and other sources.

They focused on three colonies that had experienced major disruptions caused either by iceberg calving or unusually early sea-ice breakup. The researchers found that penguins at the Mertz and SANAE colonies temporarily moved to alternative locations, including nearby icebergs, sheltered embayments, and ice shelves, before eventually returning to their former breeding areas.

The Remarkable Movements of the SANAE Colony

Landsat first photographed the SANAE colony in 1984. At that time, the birds were breeding on fast ice inside a protected bay in the Queen Maud Land region of East Antarctica.

A major calving event in 2011 changed the local environment. The loss of ice exposed the fast-ice habitat to stronger and more severe winds, prompting the colony to move to rift ice inside an embayment approximately 11 kilometers, or 7 miles, to the south.

This relocation did not last permanently. Some members of the colony moved to another nearby site, while others returned to the original breeding location in 2016.

Breeding on an Ice Shelf

During the 2016–2017 breeding season, the penguins that had returned to their original area behaved in an unexpected way. Even though stable fast ice was available, they traveled onto the nearby ice shelf, where they gathered together and successfully bred.

Satellite imagery revealed a winding trail of guano that marked the route taken by the birds as they moved onto the ice shelf.

By 2022, after approximately a decade of movement and division between different sites, the entire SANAE colony had once again returned to its original fast-ice breeding ground. Since then, the colony has continued breeding there every year.

The Astrid Colony Also Shows Persistence

The third colony examined by the researchers was the Astrid colony, located on the Vigridisen Ice Shelf. Even after a major calving event in 2006, the birds repeatedly returned to their original breeding site.

One likely reason is that some fast ice remained in the area, while nearby icebergs provided additional protection from harsh conditions.

Guano stains in the satellite imagery nevertheless revealed that the penguins sometimes occupied a nearby ice shelf toward the end of the breeding season. This behavior occurred both before and after the major calving event.

Alternative Breeding Sites May Be More Common Than Expected

The findings suggest that emperor penguins may move between different types of surfaces more readily than scientists previously realized. Ice shelves, icebergs, and rift ice can all serve as temporary alternatives to traditional fast-ice breeding sites.

Macdonald explained that this behavior may be more widespread and practical than previously assumed. Some alternative locations may even provide better protection from strong winds.

The ability to relocate could represent a useful adaptation as ocean temperatures rise and sea ice becomes less predictable. However, behavioral flexibility has limits. Macdonald emphasized that the ability to change locations alone is unlikely to completely compensate for the long-term consequences of continued sea-ice loss.

Satellites Are Essential for Understanding Their Future

There is still much to discover about emperor penguins. Their colonies are located in some of the most isolated and difficult-to-reach environments on Earth, making traditional field research challenging and expensive.

For this reason, satellite observations are becoming increasingly valuable. Long-term imagery from government-operated satellites provides researchers with a way to monitor colonies that are otherwise extremely difficult to access.

As LaRue noted, these remote observations will be crucial for understanding how emperor penguins respond to environmental change and what their future may look like in an increasingly altered Antarctic climate.

The new research does not remove the serious threats posed by declining sea ice and climate change. Instead, it reveals another side of emperor penguin survival: their ability to adjust, relocate, and persist when familiar breeding conditions change. Continued satellite monitoring will help scientists determine how far that flexibility can carry these remarkable birds as Antarctica continues to warm.