What’s happening to Antarctica’s penguins? With Dr Tom Hart

On April 25th, we celebrated World Penguin Day - a day dedicated to celebrating these incredibly charismatic birds and raising awareness of the immense challenges they face. Someone who knows a lot about this subject is SOSF project leader and penguinologist Dr Tom Hart. Aside from having one of the coolest job titles out there, Tom has dedicated his life to researching the wildlife of one of the most remote places on the planet - Antarctica. It is also a place that is changing rapidly, and its residents are coming under increasing pressure from anthropogenic impacts. Broadly, penguins are in decline, and Tom wants to know why. This episode, we dive into his fascinating research to disentangle the drivers of penguin decline, and find out what it's really like to have one of the wildest environments on earth as your office. We talk about how amazingly adapted penguins are to a very challenging lifestyle, how they cope with the relatively new arrival of tourists, and some things we can all be doing to help safeguard them, and the place that they call home. 

If you want to get involved in penguin conservation, why not head to Penguin Watch (https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/penguintom79/penguin-watch or check out @penguin_watch), a citizen science initiative set up by Tom and his collaborators where you can contribute to vital penguin research from the comfort of your sofa!

This podcast was brought to you by the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF). Find out more about our work here: www.saveourseas.com.