Tuesday 15th December 2020
Dr Tom Hart, Penguinologist, University of Oxford – Counting in the wild – using drones, remote cameras and citizen science to observe penguins in a changing world.
Tom Hart uses a variety of approaches to study penguins and their response to changing environments. He’ll discuss how remote sensing and citizen science has changed how we can view the world; even in remote places like Antarctica.
Tom has a passion for wildlife in extreme environments and is working hard to conserve them in a changing world. He leads the Polar Ecology Research Group at the University of Oxford, where he studies penguins to help conserve them, but also shags in the Southern Ocean and kittiwakes and guillemots in the Arctic. Tom first went South during his PhD on Macaroni Penguin foraging behavior with the British Antarctic Survey, where he instantly in love with South Georgia. His love of the Antarctic Peninsula came a few years later. He now tackles the data gaps that are needed to manage Antarctica head on; counting the Danger Islands, the South Sandwich Islands and the need to understand and manage the krill fishery. He monitors penguin colonies all year-round using time-lapse cameras, AI and citizen science (www.penguinwatch.org). Since it launched in September 2014, Penguin Watch has had 8 million hits and changed the way we can monitor the Polar Regions. The point of all these new techniques is to better monitor remote areas and to prioritize those that are under strain in order to create effective protected areas and fisheries management. His main loves in the Polar Regions are South Georgia and macaroni penguins; South Georgia because it is amazing and macaroni penguins because they share his special outlook on life. In his spare time, Tom sails and packrafts, recently crossing Iceland by packraft and foot and cruising up the West coast of Greenland.