Banded Penguins Skew Climate Change Data by Dying Early

Banded penguins skew climate change data because they die early. The thing that causes them to die early appears to be the fact that they have the band on their flippers. However, this does not mean that the researchers believe that climate change did not occur – they stress that it is still happening.
The band actually limits the penguins’ ability to survive and reproduce according to a French team of marine biologists. They even suggest that the practice of banded penguins should end based on their 10-year study.
The fact that the banding affects the penguins’ lives, also makes these scientists believe that studies that have relied on data from the penguins as a climate change indicator need to be reconsidered because the bands may have led to the decline of the cute creatures and not climate change.
There is already a controversy surrounding this French study though. People who think the study is wrong say that the team used bad bands and bad methods of banding penguins.
A possible alternative to banded penguins is data chipping the birds in their tail, which is the other method of tracking penguins that the French team used. Honestly the issue of banding is a huge point of contention for penguin researchers. It seems that something should change with the research method to ensure that the birds are not harmed.