Dr. Wagner’s latest entry in the Last Word on Nothing: Saint Rock
Be sure to check out Eric Wagner’s newest essay for The Last Word On Nothing called Saint Rock! Featured photo credit: Eric Wagner
Field updates: Argentina, October-November 2025
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
Dr. Wagner’s latest essay featured in Encyclopedia of Puget Sound
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
Field updates: Argentina, March 2025
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
New essay by Eric Wagner: Behavioral Observation
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.
Eric Wagner’s newest essay – “Snapshot: The Penguins at Twilight”
Be sure to check out Eric Wagner’s newest essay for The Last Word On Nothing, called “Snapshot: The Penguins at Twilight” ! Featured image photo credit: Eric Wagner
Field updates: Argentina, April 2024
Thanks to the generous support of Zoo Augsburg in Germany, Dr. Eric Wagner and Katie Holt 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. As of today 18 satellite tags are still transmitting to our
Testing Technology with the Woodland Park Zoo
Since 2015, we have deployed automatic weighbridges to track the foraging success of Magellanic penguins at one of their largest breeding colonies – Punta Tombo, Argentina. These weighbridges weigh penguins noninvasively as they leave the nesting area to forage and when they return to feed their chicks. This helps us track whether these penguins are finding enough food for themselves
A fearful scourge to the penguin colonies
Full title: A fearful scourge to the penguin colonies: Southern giant petrel (Macronectes giganteus) predation on living Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) may be more common than assumedAuthors: Dr. Eric Wagner, Dr. Ginger Rebstock and Dr. P Dee BoersmaJournal: Marine Ecology Press SeriesDOI: 10.1002/ece3.11258 Excerpt from abstract: Southern giant petrels (Macronectes giganteus) are important consumers that range across the oceans throughout
Dr. Eric Wagner featured on podcast Raising Kind Humans
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
Dr. Eric Wagner’s latest post: The Bird Flu Chronicles
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
Changing course: Relocating commercial tanker lanes significantly reduces threat of chronic oiling for a top marine predator
Authors: Eric L. Wagner, Esteban Frere, P. Dee BoersmaJournal: Marine Pollution BulletinDOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.11 Photo credit: National Ocean Service Image Gallery Summary Written by Sofia Denkovski Argentinian oil and effects on seabirds Surveys from 1982-1990 suggested more than 40,000 penguins died per year in Chubut and Santa Cruz from chronic oiling. This was hypothesized to be due to the colonies’ proximity
Dr. Wagner’s latest essay: The Molt
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
Field updates: Argentina, April 2023
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 featured in NOAA webinar
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.