Real lives

摘要

Evelyn Cuyett was cruising off the coast of the Antarctic peninsula in an inflatable boat when the leopard seal started biting its underside. "It was so close I could have poked it," she recalls, "if I had wanted to lose a hand," Cuyett had spent a week collecting Gentoo penguin feathers at 10 nesting sites, scooping them from the faeces-littered floor or plucking them from the rumps of unsuspecting birds. She often ended up splattered head to toe in penguin poo. The DNA in the feathers is now being analysed in a bid to understand why penguins living in northern Antarctica are declining in number, Are they migrating south or are they dying out?