CTT teams up with u-blox for groundbreaking Antarctic penguin conservation initiative

u-blox, a global provider of positioning and wireless communication technologies and services, has provided the US-based company Cellular Tracking Technologies (CTT), a global leader in wildlife telemetry and IoT solutions, with its CloudLocate positioning service to enable scientists to track and monitor the diving and feeding behavior of a large Adélie penguin colony on Ross Island, in Antarctica, one of the harshest environments on Earth.

The project started when Point Blue, an American wildlife conservation leader, contacted CTT for support to develop a tracking device to research the whereabouts of juvenile Adélie penguins on Ross Island. One of only five species of penguins on the continent, Adélie penguins serve as a widely recognized indicator species for scientists, demonstrating sensitivity to shifts in climate and the environment. Monitoring their population is thus crucial for assessing alterations in the marine ecosystem that can result from climate change and human activities like commercial fishing.

Scientists aiming to monitor wildlife for conservation purposes in such remote regions face an array of technical challenges, such as the small size of the Adélie penguins, their speed and the long time spent underwater, and the lack of affordable connectivity. Any tracking device must therefore be extremely light and non-invasive for the animal, as well as consume very little battery power to last longer and prevent multiple replacements. It also has to be extremely data efficient to minimize expensive satellite connectivity costs.