Adventure Travel Blogs

ZSL scientist Ben Collen heads down to Argentina to join Penguinologist Tom Hart for their trip down to the Antarctic Peninsula.

Tom and I have just met up in Ushuaia – referred to on the posters as ‘the end of the world’.  Feels strange then, that it’s our starting off point.  Ushuaia sits right on the edge of the Beagle channel, nestled among the mountains at the far Southern end of Tierra del Fuego.  Despite it being the height of summer, the wind whistles over the glacier...

We are designing a new scheme to monitor penguins in Antarctica in much more detail than ever before. Step one relies entirely on showing that cameras can survive the winter. Operating electrical equipment remotely, in logistically difficult places to access, which experience extreme temperatures is challenging for both scientists, and the equipment we use. You will therefore understand our nervousness as we returned to our sites: did our cameras manage to survive the Antarctic winter?

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ZSL Penguinologist Tom Hart is hiking across South Georgia with the joint tasks of working on the rat eradication project, collecting penguin feathers for DNA sampling, and checking the cameras set up last season to see if they’ve made it though the winter.  Here is his latest news…

13th November
We’ve just been dropped off in Coral Bay, South Georgia – it’s across Cumberland Bay from King Edward Point and really scenic. It’s a little horseshoe co...

The Zoological Society of London’s penguinologist Tom Hart, will be journeying south again for another Antarctic field season, supported by Exodus, continuing his work looking into the secret lives of penguins. He will be joined again by fellow ZSL scientist Ben Collen to carry on their monitoring work which they established last year, and MSc student Gemma Clucas who will be working on the DNA ‘feather-printing’ project.

Penguinology
We have been working i...

Ship's log: 13 March 2011 - We ended with a pot of gold

On February 27 over a hundred people boarded the gently angled gangway of the Akademic Ioffe. Despite the acres of digested prose there was still a semblance of trepidation and palpable powerful portents of delicious, delectable, dramatic dramas ahead. Conversation with new neighbours was stilted, anxiety mixed with impatience ? for many this patient pilgrimage has lasted years not months.
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