We continued our Punta Tombo field season this winter with graduate student Erik Johansson, former undergrad lab member Chloe Rabinowitz, and program coordinator Kalyna Durbak staying on site from January 12 through February 21. Our goal for this trip was to attach GTA* and GPS tags on adult penguins who were actively feeding chicks in order to log their foraging […]
Dee took part in a panel during “Celebrating Women’s Impact” on March 15 2024 at the Nixon Library, in honor of Pat Nixon’s 112th birthday and Women’s History Month. The full event was live streamed, and can be watched on YouTube. Dee’s specific panel can be found in this video.
The paper “Climate presses and pulses mediate the decline of a migratory predator”,” published last year ” is the finalist for the Cozzarelli Prize in the category Class VI: Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. Congrats to former Abrahms Lab postdoc Dr.T. J. Clark-Wolf, Dr. Dee Boersma, Dr. Ginger A. Rebstock, and Dr. Briana Abrahms! Read the full press release
Dr. Dee Boersma received the British Ornithological Union’s Godman Salvin Prize on February 23, 2024, during the Pacific Seabird Group’s annual conference banquet. The Godman Salvin Prize is awarded by BOU Council to honor an individual’s distinguished ornithological work. Recent Godman Salvin Prize recipients include Professor Cao Lei (2023), Professor Nick Davies (2022) and Professor Theunis Piersma (2020). The Committee
That’s right- Dee will be featured in a penguin themed board game! Joining her are Dr. Pablo “Popi” Boroboroglu, Dr. Heather Lynch, Dr. Lloyd Spencer Davis, Dylan deNapoli, and Dr. Katrin Ludynia. Get a $5 discount on your own copy of Waddle Waddle by signing up for updates on their GameFound site. Here’s what Brush-Tail Games said about adding Dee
Dr. Eric Wagner talked with Katie Doughty, host of the podcast Raising Kind Humans, about parenting, penguins, and protecting the planet. Find the link to the podcast below, or wherever you download your other podcasts. Raising Kind Humans, episode 56 Katie also wrote a couple of children’s books starring penguins. Follow Team Kind Humans on Instagram @katie_doughty
Find Eric’s latest entry “The Bird Flu Chronicles” on The Last Word on Nothing blog. In it he talks about one of the lab’s favorite penguins, Turbo. Here’s a short excerpt: On my final day at Tombo, I made one last run to the gull colony. We would depart in the morning. How were we leaving the penguins? Much as
Did you catch Dr. Boersma in the NYT Magazine? Read through the interview and see the stunning photos on the NYT Magazine website.
Written by Dr. Dee Boersma The ongoing pinniped (seals and walruses) die-off on Peninsula Valdés is catastrophic. Our contacts in Argentina–two local veterinarians (Marci Uhart and Ralph Vanstreels), and Claudia Campagna of WCS–tell us that hundreds and potentially thousands of sea lions and elephant seals have died. Avian flu (more widely known as bird flu) has devastated seabird populations throughout
Dr. Eric Wagner’s latest essay, The Molt, can be found on the website The Last Word On Nothing. Here’s a small excerpt: A living animal is alive all the time. Every moment matters in an unending stream of being, whether we are watching or not. This isn’t an end for the penguins. It isn’t a beginning, either. They are simply
Thanks to the generous support of Zoo Augsburg in Germany, Dr. Ginger Rebstock and Dr. Eric Wagner were able to return to Punta Tombo for a couple of weeks in April. There, they put twenty satellite tags on penguins—ten females and ten males—that were about to start their post-breeding migration. From last year’s tagging effort, we know that females hug
Eric Wagner was featured in a webinar series co-sponsored by NOAA’s Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary and Feiro Marine Life Center. In this talk, Eric discussed the ongoing research on the rhinoceros auklets of Destruction Island (and beyond), and talked about what these furtive birds can show us about the larger world in which they try to make their living.
In January and February of 2023 Dr. Dee Boersma, along with PhD students Katie Holt (Boersma Lab) and Erik Johansson (Abrahms Lab), spent six weeks in Punta Tombo to set up the remote scales that weigh penguins on their way in and out of the breeding area, and followed 19 penguins using GPS tags. The three of them were also able
Congratulations to Dr. Sue Moore on joining the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission! The U.S. Senate confirmed Dr. Sue Moore, President Biden’s nominee for Commissioner of the Marine Mammal Commission, on December 22nd, 2022. Sue was sworn in by Commission Chair, Dr. Frances Gulland, on January 5th, 2023.
Odile Stern, a New York artist and renowned eclectic collector, donated her penguin collection to the Boersma Chair in Natural History and Conservation at the University of Washington (UW). In February 1987, Ms. Stern, traveled to Punta Tombo as part of volunteer group from UW and the Wildlife Conservation Society to help with penguin research. Every year for a decade,
