Community Program

Dr Julie McInnes is a wildlife ecologist with the Australian Antarctic Division who has spent years following penguins and other seabirds across some of the wildest corners of the Southern Ocean. From tracking where penguins go to analysing what they leave behind, her research reveals the secret lives of seabirds: sometimes one poo at a time.

Dr Antje Steinfurth is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds's resident "penguinologist", with more than two decades spent studying penguins from the Galápagos to South Africa and some of the remotest islands of the South Atlantic. These days, she follows endangered Northern Rockhoppers, proving that a career chasing penguins can take you almost literally to the ends of the Earth.

Dr Yan Ropert-Coudert is a CNRS research director, former Director of the French Polar Institute and a member of the French delegation to the Antarctic Treaty System. He is a marine ecologist who has spent decades using penguins as "living observatories" of the ocean. By fitting them with tiny electronic loggers, he follows what they do beneath the waves. He takes us from penguin science into the fascinating world of Antarctic research, conservation and geopolitics.

Dr Andrea Raya Rey is a seabird ecologist with CONICET in Tierra del Fuego, studying penguins and other marine wildlife at the very tip of South America. From tracking where penguins go to discovering what, and where, they eat, her research reveals how these remarkable birds make a living in one of the wildest oceans on Earth.