Dee Boersma, UW Biology Professor and director of the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, was recently featured in a National Geographic article on the world's rarest penguins, the Galapagos penguins. Boersma has been studying these penguins for fifty-four years. Also mentioned in this article is Caroline Cappello, UW Biology PhD alum.
Excerpt from National Geographic article:
Roughly 600 miles off the coast of mainland Ecuador, conservation biologist Dee Boersma cruised in an inflatable Zodiac through the blue waters surrounding Bartolomé Island, a small part of the Pacific Ocean archipelago known as the Galápagos Islands. She was joined by several other scientists, all of whom scanned the shoreline for an elusive black-and-white seabird. Standing about a foot and a half tall, Galápagos penguins are the rarest and among the smallest penguins in the world. But most notably, they are the only ones living at the Equator, existing on these volcanic islands in the blazing hot sun.
“How could you not fall in love with these birds?” asked the 78-year old director of the University of Washington’s Center for Ecosystem Sentinels and a National Geographic Explorer. “They’re comical, they’re curious, they’re endearing.”
Boersma suddenly pointed to five penguins near a cave. Then another, and another. Seven in total. Once the boat got close enough to shore, two Ecuadorians, veterinarian M. Gavilanes Escobar and park guard Marlon Ramón, leaped out, easily scaling the sharp and slippery rocks. In less than five minutes, Escobar was back, lightly gripping a penguin under its chin with one hand and propping its feet in his other. He passed it to Boersma, who was ready with her calipers to ascertain the size of the bird’s bill and feet. Then she pulled out her yellow tape measure to discern the length of the bird’s wingspan. “We’re measuring him for a suit,” she joked.
These were the first steps in the process of recording information that allows researchers to monitor the health of the colony in this area. Next, Boersma cinched a red cord around the penguin’s chest and attached it to a scale. Now the flightless bird was dangling in midair, flippers whirling. “That’s a big one,” she told her colleague Caroline Cappello, a wildlife ecologist who has studied penguins in the Galápagos alongside Boersma for more than a decade. Cappello recorded the data: a little more than five pounds and likely a male. Freeing the feisty bird from the cord, Boersma then secured its head between her left forearm and knee in a well-practiced maneuver to protect her legs from painful bites. “You’re all right. You’re all right,” she told the squirming penguin. “You’re so soft. Yes, you are. Calm down. We’re going to let you go in just a minute.”
The penguin’s flippers, thick at the top and tapered to a thin trailing edge, ideally shaped for soaring through water, were in great condition, she noted, smoothing them with her hands protected by beige wool fingerless gloves. She affixed a tiny metal tag into the webbing of its left foot and gently set it down on the edge of the Zodiac. Seemingly unfazed by the ordeal, the penguin surveyed the water, then leaned forward and quietly plopped into the Pacific to again swim among green sea turtles and marine iguanas. “Touching a bird like that is electric,” Boersma said as she watched it vanish beneath the surface.
It is also an increasingly rare opportunity for researchers. Today Galápagos penguins join the more than half of all penguin species that are classified as endangered or vulnerable, imperiled by such threats as warming temperatures, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. Boersma, who has been called the Jane Goodall of penguins, considers these birds to be marine sentinels—or canaries in a coal mine—describing how one species’ rapid decline signals a significant natural or human-made change happening within its environment.
Still, she believes that the species has the capacity to hang on, in part because researchers continue to gain a better understanding of how these creatures leverage centuries of adaptations to be resilient in the increasingly unpredictable world around them. “Fifty-four years ago, when I started this, I thought Galápagos penguins would be gone by
now,” she said. “But they’re still here.”