Navigating unpredictable oceans: Mapping fine-scale temporal and spatial variability in little penguin foraging areas

This dataset was used to conduct the study "Navigating unpredictable oceans: Mapping fine-scale temporal and spatial variability in little penguin foraging areas" accepted in Marine Ecology Progress Series in 2025.This folder is separated in three parts: LP tracks, Models and Environmental Variables. Plus on folder with figures from the paper.LP track: In this part we pretreat 13 years of GPS from 422 little penguinsEnvironmental Variables: In this part we interpolated and resize to our grid the different variables. List: Chlorophyll a concentration, Current direction, Current speed, Depth (Bathymetry), Distance to the colony, MHW category, MHW duration, MHW intensity, MHW presence, SST, Swell wave height, Thermocline presence, Thermocline depth, Thermocline gradient, Waves direction, Wave height, Wind wave height. Models: Habitat models are done to link the penguin presence and the environmental conditionsMore information are available in the different READ.me files.Using 13 years of GPS data from 422 little penguins, we tested whether they rely on consistent foraging areas to reduce search times or respond to dynamic environmental cues. Our results suggest a combination of these strategies depending on the spatial scale. Little penguins used only 32% of the potential foraging range, concentrating in shallow waters within 70 km and mostly east of their colony, as confirmed by our spatial density models. However, finer-scale analyses using kriging maps showed no recurring foraging hotspots over 13 years (2010-2022), suggesting high inter-annual variability in prey availability. Despite this variability, penguins consistently spent more time in the most productive areas and also exploited more areas with favourable environmental conditions to access prey (thermocline, current, waves), even as these conditions shifted within and across breeding seasons. In years of poor conditions, they foraged further from the colony, resulting in lower breeding success. These results emphasise the adaptability of little penguins to dynamic environmental conditions but underscore the vulnerability of their foraging and breeding success to oceanographic variability in a climate-impacted ecosystem.