Every year our field workers observe juvenile penguins returning to shore for their first molt. In honor of this momentous time in a penguin’s life, we are bringing to you Fat Penguins Week! In late austral summer and early austral fall, Magellanic penguins undergo their annual catastrophic molt. For approximately 19 days, juvenile and adult penguins avoid the water and […]
Dr. Sue E. Moore is the 2026 recipient of the Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Marine Mammalogy, recognizing her outstanding career and lasting contributions to marine mammal science. The Society for Marine Mammalogy established the Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of the Society’s founding President Dr. Kenneth S. Norris. The award recognizes
Written on January 20, 2026 by Chloe Rabinowitz; edited by Kalyna Durbak Our field work crew has been here for a while! Sofia Denkovski, Anna Testorf, and Chloe Rabinowitz arrived in Punta Tombo on January 6th, followed by Dr. Dee Boersma on the 12th. We have been getting well acquainted with all our active research nests and have been progressing
Be sure to check out Eric Wagner’s newest essay for The Last Word On Nothing called Saint Rock! Featured photo credit: Eric Wagner
Written by Dr. Eric Wagner Starting the season – stake survey and tag hunting In late October, Dr. Eric Wagner and Abrahms graduate student Meredith Honig traveled to Argentina to start the 2025-2026 field season. After getting a provisional permit from the provincial authorities, they arrived at Punta Tombo on October 29. They then spent the next two days completing
Join Dr. Dee Boersma, Dr. Sue Moore, and Dr. Nigella Hillgarth on a cruise to Baffin Island! This will be an expedition from Greenland to the Canadian Arctic and into the Northwest Passages, from September 1 – 18, 2026. Sail in the same waters as Roald Amundsen and his crew of six during their 1903-06 successful navigation of the Northwest
Dr. Sue Moore and Dr. Jennifer Tennessen attended One Ocean Week Seattle. This event is a region-wide, international gathering of ocean leaders, innovators, researchers, startups, policymakers, artists, educators, and communities to accelerate solutions for a sustainable, inclusive maritime future. Dr. Moore was a panelist on the “Coast to Coast Collaboration in Research” session held onboard the Statsraad Lehmkuh Tallship. She
On October 11, 2025 Dr. Dee Boersma finally signed the AAAS’s Book of Members during the 2025 induction ceremony. Congratulations Dee! Dee was officially inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. Dee couldn’t make the 2021 induction ceremony due to COVID, and field work trips kept her from attending a ceremony after 2021.
Dr. Dee Boersma, Dr. Sue Moore, and Dr. Caroline Cappello were in the Galápagos from July 25 – August 3 to survey the penguins on the islands. They were able to measure 36 of them—16 more than last year! Measuring penguins is an essential part of our project, which is maintaining continuity with our decades-long dataset on the species. Dr. Boersma began studying
Welcome to the next installment of Meet CES, where we get to meet the people behind the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels. Next up is Dr. Katie Holt, who just earned her PhD at the University of Washington! Katie’s been with the Boersma Lab since October 2015, when she was hired to replace Caroline Cappello as Lab Coordinator. She started graduate
Dr. Wagner‘s newest essay, Coming into the colony, was published in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound on July 17 2025. Here’s a snippet of the introduction: Gulls are perhaps our most familiar seabird. Pick a seashore or even an occasional landfill, and you are likely to see at least a few. But casual sightings don’t always paint a true picture
Make sure to pick up the latest copy of National Geographic and read about Dr. Dee Boersma‘s work on Galápagos penguins! Reporter Rene Ebersole traveled with Dee and recent grad Caroline Cappello last summer as they checked up on the human-built Galápagos penguin nests they built in 2010. Included in the article is a sweet photo of Dee and Caroline
Written by Dr. Eric Wagner Thanks once again to generous support from Zoo Augsburg, research scientist Dr. Eric Wagner and computer specialist Pearl Wellington traveled to Punta Tombo in early March for a couple of weeks to mark the end of the breeding season. Eric and Pearl went to deploy twenty geolocating time-depth recorder (GLD) tags to female and male
Written by Katie Holt I kicked off the year by heading the joint meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group and the Waterbird Society in San José, Costa Rica! At the conference, I presented my research on how commercial fishing reduces the rate at which adult seabirds acquire food while foraging. As the only member of the Boersma Lab in attendance,
Read Eric Wagner’s newest post for The Last Word called Behavioral Observation, where Eric tries to ground-truth accelerometry data to determine how often incubating penguins go down to the ocean to drink water, move, and possibly admire their interior decorating skills.
