“We didn’t expect penguins to still be there and thought we would have to locate them on the pack ice which was going to be more difficult.“

To their surprise some adult emperor penguins had stayed at Cape Colbeck which were quickly tagged. When they did eventually leave, the transmitted data revealed that these penguins were not breeding birds.

“If they were breeders, their tracks would have been a lot shorter and they would have returned to the breeding ground by early June but they didn’t. They kept foraging because they had no reason to go back.”

This gave Dr Goetz and her team the opportunity to gather a lot of information about a demographic group that they hadn’t intended to study, at a time when the birds experience the most severe environmental conditions of the annual life cycle.