Tom has a passion for wildlife in extreme environments and is working hard to conserve them in a changing world. His PhD involved tracking macaroni penguins to understand penguin foraging behavior. Since then, he has diversified into genetics and image analysis to monitor wildlife in remote places. He runs the Penguin Watch project initiated at Oxford University and currently hosted at Oxford Brookes University. Through this research project, he seeks to understand changes in Antarctic wildlife using time-lapse cameras and drones.
Since it launched in September 2014, Penguin Watch has had 6 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.