It's NONFICTION NOVEMBER! Join us for an Antarctic adventure with the Penguin Guy, Guillaume de Remacle! Dive into a world of penguins, breathtaking landscapes, and the secrets of the Southernmost Post Office. Discover the beauties and challenges of Antarctica, the incredible world of these fascinating birds, and how we can all become Antarctic ambassadors. 🐧❄️ #AdventuresInLearningPodcast
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
It's NONFICTION NOVEMBER! Join us for an Antarctic adventure with the Penguin Guy, Guillaume de Remacle! Dive into a world of penguins, breathtaking landscapes, and the secrets of the Southernmost Post Office. Discover the beauties and challenges of Antarctica, the incredible world of these fascinating birds, and how we can all become Antarctic ambassadors. 🐧❄️ #AdventuresInLearningPodcast
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
[00:01] Dr. Diane: Wonder, curiosity, connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr. Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures In Learning. Welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Diane, and today I'm so excited because we get to go back and meet somebody who made my time in Antarctica super special. I'm going to introduce you to the penguin guy, Gui. Welcome to the show.
[00:41] Gui: Hello. Thank you very much. Jan? Yes. My name is Guillaume.
[00:46] Dr. Diane: Yes. Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you became the penguin guy?
[00:53] Gui: Sure. Hello, everyone. Nice to meet you. My name is Guillaume. I've been working in Antarctica for five years now. I first started in a station called Port Lockroy that is also called the penguin station. And this station is hiring every year four people to look after the station. So it's managed by England, and they send four people every year to welcome guests on the station, to make them visit the museum and send some postcards and some stamps. And there's a penguin colony on this station, and the team that is sent there every year is also in charge to monitor the penguin colony and monitor their reproduction. And I was in charge of that part. I was very lucky because I didn't have any background, but they knew I was a big fan of animals and nature. And so, basically, I spent four months counting penguins on a tiny island in Antarctica. And that was the beginning of everything for me. And from there, I've been hired by a polar expedition company called Albatross Expedition, who hired me to be the penguin guy. And granted that I study a bit on my side to widen my knowledge about penguins, but being among a penguin colony for four months was definitely a very good ground for good knowledge about. Yeah. Now, I go to Antarctica every winter, and I try to make people aware and in love with penguins during my lectures and talks about penguins and seabirds.
[02:34] Dr. Diane: Well, let's talk some about penguins, and then we'll talk about what it was like to live on the island. So when you were counting penguins, how do you count a colony of penguins? Let's start with that.
[02:48] Gui: Yeah, it's a good question. How would you count penguins? Because they keep moving all the time. But when penguins come on land, they come to reproduce, right? They are seabirds. They live at sea all the rest of the year. But when time comes, they need to reproduce, and they need to go on land for that, to build a nest and to lay eggs on the nest. Because the penguins we are following are from the family, the brushtail penguins. And those penguins build a nest. Most people, they know the Emperor penguin that carries eggs on his feet. But most penguins build a nest and lay two to three eggs on this nest every winter. So one nest is two penguins. Basically it's nest and that gives you the number of breeding pairs that is reproducing this year. And then once we know more or less how many are reproducing, we're going to count the eggs directly on the nest. So we wait a little bit. The way we were operating is that the colonies usually split in small rookeries, so the penguins will some will go on the upper part, some will go on the lower part. So I was focusing on a small part with 70 nests. And I would go every other day on those nests to see how many eggs were inside. And when 90% of those nests had at least one egg, we would do a count of the whole island and all the nests and all the eggs of the island. That's what it was, more or less. And then we would wait for the first egg to hatch, first chicks to arrive, and then once again I would go in this small query of 70 nest and count the chicks arriving. And once I had 80% of my nest with at least one chick, we would count all the chicks of the island. And so how you do to count eggs and chicks? I'm going to give you a very big secret and obviously I was trained to do that. But you lift the tail of the penguin that is laying on the eggs and you look at what's under him and you put him down very quickly and it just lasts 1 second, no more. You put it up and down and you know what's under him? Either eggs or chicks. That's the trick.
[05:04] Dr. Diane: And the penguins didn't react negatively to that.
[05:10] Gui: If you do it quick enough, they don't even have time to realize what's happening. They put their nose on the ground and they balance with the bill deep inside the snow. And once you put them back down, they just do like that and get rid of the snow at the tip of the building. That's it.
[05:39] Dr. Diane: And so with the brush tails that you were looking at on Port Lockroy, those were generally Gentoo penguins, is that correct?
[05:48] Gui: Yes, that's correct. I should have started with that. The brush tail penguins, you have three sorts of brush tail penguins. You have the Gentoo penguins, the Adele penguins and the Chinstrap penguins. They are the main species that we find in Antarctica.
[06:01] Dr. Diane: And how do you tell the difference between the three types for those who have never seen those kinds of penguins before?
[06:07] Gui: Yes, you're right. So the Gentoo penguins, they are black and white. They have a bright red bill and they have some white patch around the eye here. They're quite beautiful and very smart. They're my favorite, obviously. Then the chinstrap penguins are completely black and white, but they have a black stripe around their jaw here, which make them very easy to recognize. As for the Adeli penguin. It's also black and white with a blue eye and a pinkish bill. That's the difference. So from the distance, from far away, if you only see the back of the penguin, it's a bit hard to tell them apart. But if you see the face, then it's quite easy to tell them apart. And they have a long tail, like a longer tail than the others.
[06:56] Dr. Diane: And do you do good penguin imitations in terms of the calls?
[07:04] Gui: You know me too well. Yes. I can do the Genoo. So Gentoo penguin, they go like that. They go like (imitates sound).
[07:23] Dr. Diane: I've missed that sound.
[07:27] Gui: But when you live among a penguin colony, it was about 1700 penguins. You hear that song day and night all the time. It's cute at the beginning and it gets to be tiring at the end. But you can't sleep at night.
[07:42] Dr. Diane: I can imagine. And so do they make that sound all night long as well? Is there any difference day and night for them?
[07:49] Gui: No, they have a kind of a quiet nighttime, I would say something around three to 4 hours where you don't hear much, and then they wake up earlier than us.
[07:59] Dr. Diane: And I just remembered you would have been there when there was all the sun as well, because you were there in the summer months.
[08:05] Gui: That's correct.
[08:06] Dr. Diane: So I would imagine they're also influenced by the sun in terms of the noise they're making.
[08:13] Gui: I can't really say about that. One thing sure, that they make sounds to recognize each other and to talk basically to each other. So every time a penguin is coming back to the colony, its partner is going to sing to it, more or less, to make sure that he remembers the way to the nest. But we also noticed that around 07:00 p.m., seems like penguins were all coming back to the colony. Whether they were on the nest or not, they would come back to the colony. And around eight, nine p.m., you would have both penguins next to the nest, the one laying down and the one standing next to it. So, yeah, I don't know for sure if all the penguins come back to the colony at night, but there is definitely a time of where everything is a bit calm and at peace.
[09:10] Dr. Diane: And the penguin pairs, they stick together for the season. Do they stay together longer than that?
[09:17] Gui: That's a good question. And it's hard because every time I answer this question, I'm breaking hearts. But it is said that penguins are monogamous and they stay together for life. But a mistake that is sometimes made is that monogamous in the wildlife means that you have one partner only during the breeding season. So if you take wolves or deers, for example, it's a pack, and you will have an alpha male that will have many females during the reproduction period. Penguins, they will have only one partner. And to answer your questions, some of them will stay with the same partner for a while, but with the same partner for life, it’s very rare. Only a few of them do that and it's hard, it's for life, but they tend to go back to the same partner for several seasons in a row. But as for the brushtail penguin, it is said that in average, they go back to the same partner for two to three years in a row and then they change partners.
[10:14] Dr. Diane: The breeding pairs, do they share the responsibility for caring for the egg during breeding season? Is one going out and getting food while the other watches the egg and they switch? Or does somebody go out and bring food back?
[10:31] Gui: That's a very good question. And yes, that's correct. They will take turns on the nest. Both adults will look after the eggs and the chicks, and they will take turn on the nest. So when we talk about the brush tail penguins, the rotation is about every ten to 12 hours. So one partner will stay on the nest while the other go to feed and then they will swap around. It is complicated for some colonies. They are up on the hill and it's quite a walk, sometimes up to a kilometer. So sometimes the rotation can be a bit longer. And I was told, I never noticed that myself, but I was told that sometimes if the female takes too long to come back, the male will abandon the nest if he's too hungry. But it's a male behavior, apparently, not a female behavior, but I've never noticed that with my own eyes.
[11:27] Dr. Diane: I did not know that. And then they're dependent on krill. And can you describe a little bit about what krill is? For those who don't know?
[11:37] Gui: Sure. The krill is a shrimp like crustacean that is part of the plankton, and very small one. It's about, I would say, two to 3 CM long, even smaller. And it's really the main food available for both whales, seals and penguins in Antarctica. And basically it grows thanks to the sea ice. So with the sea ice, you have a lot of algae growing under the sea ice during winter. And when summer comes, with the photosynthesis coming, those algae and phytoplankton are growing massively, which brings a lot of food for the krill. And the figures are that the krill grow every summer by 360,000,000 tons. Wow. It's a lot of shrimps in the water. And everybody is relying on the krill. So it's really the cornerstone of the food web in Antarctica. And penguins are quite dependent on them. The Gentoo a bit less because the Gentoo has a diverse diet. They can go deeper than the others. They can dive up to 100 meters deep, where we find some fishes, when the Chinstrap and the Adelie for example, have shorter dives and rely almost uniquely on the krill, which make them a bit dependent to the well being of the krill. When the Gentoo is more adaptable and less dependent on the krill, that will have huge importance in the future.
[13:10] Dr. Diane: Well, I was just thinking that as you were talking about sea ice and krill, and I was thinking about climate change. What have you seen over the last five years in terms of changes in Antarctica, things that we should be concerned about?
[13:23] Gui: Well, five years is very short to draw conclusions because you need more time to see if what you are looking at is just an event or if it's going to last in the future. So for now, five years is too short. I can't really say that I've seen big changes, but one thing sure is the years are not the same from one to another. When it used to be more with almost no snow, and then four with a lot, a lot of snow, a lot of precipitation. Either snow or rain, which has a huge impact for the penguins because they need to find solid ground to build a nest. They can't build a nest on snow. So if the snow fall is lasting too long and too far into summer, it means that the penguins can't build a nest before December or January and can't lay the eggs before January or February, which is very late in the season because their whole reproduction cycle must be over before winter sets, before winter arrives. So they're quite timed and the increase of precipitation is changing that a lot. So we've seen bad years for penguins where their chicks were not ready before winter. And also with the increase of precipitation, you have also more snow and more rain coming when the chicks are already born, which make them very wet and they're not super waterproof. So you have a lot of penguin freezing because they are too cold. And that has been an issue that we saw in the past years. And then regarding the biggest change we've seen the last couple of years, that the sea ice was not as abundant as it used to be, especially in the northern part of the peninsula. So in the northern part of Antarctica there's less sea ice than the years before and with less sea ice, there is less krill. So we also witnessed some movement in the population. There are some colonies where there's no penguins coming anymore because they probably don't have enough access to food during their winter for good reproduction. So there's one Chinstrap colony on Half Moon Island where there is much, much fewer penguins than they used to be back in the days. And whether they will come back or not, we will see in the future. But for the past few years, the colony was almost empty. It doesn't mean they're dead, it just means they relocated and went to a place to reproduce where they had better access to food to make sure they can feed their chicks all along the reproduction season.
[16:07] Dr. Diane: Are people seeing the penguin colonies migrating south because of a lack of krill? Is that happening more regularly over the course of summers?
[16:22] Gui: I couldn't answer yes to that question. There is one colony for sure that has moved. We don't know yet where they've been, but so far the numbers are not changing too much, so it's too soon to draw conclusion. As I was saying, we're just concerned and looking at what's happening, but that could be something that could happen in the future. For example, the year before COVID hit, we had very few whales in the northern part of the peninsula compared to the usual. And we know that some ships that went further south found a lot of whales further south. So it's likely that they moved further south to find more krill. But last year, just after COVID, we had a lot, a lot of whales on the northern part. So that's why it's hard. From one year to another, it's not really the same, but there are some changes. But whether it will last or not, whether it will be completely different in the future or not, we don't know yet. And whether the climate change is responsible for those move on earth, it's hard to say also, but things are happening.
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[18:37] Dr. Diane: You have the opportunity to be on a ship during the Antarctic summer months. What kind of research happens on these ships? I know that generally there's tourists like me who are coming and hopefully falling in love with Antarctica and coming back to do something about what they see. But there's also research and sort of observations going on, is that right?
[19:15] Gui: Yes. So a lot of ships and scientists are using the opportunity of having the ships going down to join the expedition and to monitor via things. I know that plastic in the water, for example, is very well monitored by many ships. With Albatross, we have Danish scientists coming, not every year, but they came already twice while I was there to take some sample in penguin colonies, in penguin guano, to see a bit what was the diet and if there were any evolution in their life. So that was quite interesting. You have monitoring about the krill, the phytoplankton, about the ice, about the whales, about the seals. Lot of monitoring because I'm not going to say thanks to tourism, because that would be hard to say that. But as you have those ships going there and everything is paid for, it's quite easy to pull off the logistics of a scientific research using those ships.
[20:17] Dr. Diane: And with the rise in tourism, what are sort of your hopes that people get out of coming to Antarctica and what are the safeguards you put in place to try to make sure that tourists don't damage the continent?
[20:35] Gui: That's two big questions. The tourism in Antarctica is ruled by something called the IAATO, which helps make sure tourism doesn't have an impact or have the less impact as possible on Antarctica. So there are a lot of rules that we are required to follow, like the number of people landing on the landing site at the same time, the time when we land, the distance from the wildlife, a lot of things that are looked through. We also have to disinfect our boots and our gears every time we go to Antarctica, every time we do a landing, every time we leave the ship. We need to make sure that we go as clean as possible on the landing side, to make sure we don't move bacterias around, for example, or we don't bring anything down to Antarctica from Patagonia, which is the departure point. And what we hope for the people is to enjoy first, but then to be aware of those ecosystem, of how fragile they are, take them. Some would argue that by going there we are already putting them in danger, which in a way is true. But we also know that we only care about what we know and we only protect what we care about. So I think that making sure people get aware of Antarctica, get aware of this absolutely magnificent place, is the best way to protect it in the future. Because for now the continent is protected by the Antarctic Treaty. For now, there is no commercial activities that are allowed over there, no touristic activities on land, no mineral extraction, nothing like that. So it is protected. But the treaty is to be reviewed in few years and we hope that it will remain the same, but we can't know for sure. But one thing I hope is that the more people will get involved in protecting Antarctica and raising their voice in case of changes in the treaty, the more chance we have to see it coming through. But we shall see.
[22:58] Dr. Diane: Exactly. So what is it like to be a guide in the polar regions describe what a typical and I know there really is no typical day, but if you could describe a day in your life, what would it like?
[23:16] Gui: First, I would say that it's absolutely amazing and I thank God every day that I get this job, because it's mind blowing. Some people say that if you haven't gone to Antarctica, it's really hard for someone else to describe you what it is to be in Antarctica. But a normal day is where we take our guests out. So I will take my Zodiac to see if I find anything interesting for my guests. So I would be alone on my Zodiacs in the middle of nowhere among the ice, penguins and whales. And that's something really nice. It lasts 15 minutes, I think, but that's my freedom of the day. Then I will pick up my guests and go show them and explore the area and navigate among the icebergs and the brush ice and try to see some whales, try to see some penguins on ice. And then I will bring them to the shore side where some of my colleagues would welcome them. And they will have a chance to walk around, get a bit closer to a penguin colony, witness penguin behavior, which is quite funny and interesting and sometimes get a little hike to go on top of a hill to have a nice overview of the area, the bay, all the ice on the sea. It's quite spectacular. I said ice a lot. That's something sure about Antarctica. You need to be fond of ice because you see a lot of it.
[24:42] Dr. Diane: Yes.
[24:42] Gui: If you're not a big fan of the white landscape, then it's not for you. But it's so pristine and the silence is amazing. When people ask me for a good souvenir and a good memory in Antarctica, there's one place in particular that I love. It's a small bay with a huge glacier that goes up in the hill. And when you are down there, the bay is quite small. So this glacier has really a huge impact on you, huge strength, and you're in front of it. I switch off my engine and I let my guests just sit in silence, three, four minutes and we look at this glacier. We get all the surroundings getting into us. There's some tears sometimes on the boat, and last year I was there with one of my colleagues because we're always buddying up with another Zodiac in case anything happened. So we had both of us there switch off our engines. We're looking at the surroundings, being amazed by the beauty of nature, and a whale just blew in the middle of us. We were all in pure silence and the only thing we could hear was the whale popping out of the water in the middle of us. And that was wow. That was really cool. That was really cool.
[25:51] Dr. Diane: Absolutely.
[25:53] Gui: I can cry just thinking of it.
[25:55] Dr. Diane: Yes. And you're right about the silence, like when the engines are cut and you're just sitting there and people put their cameras down and you just listen to the ice popping and you can feel the silence. And it's truly, I think, one of the most magnificent places on Earth.
[26:19] Gui: Yeah, I believe so. But you remember it very well. You know the feeling. It's hard to describe.
[26:25] Dr. Diane: Yes. It's truly incredible. It really is. And when you're not in Antarctica, where are some of your favorite places to travel?
[26:46] Gui: I'm a big traveler, so it's hard to answer. I spend a lot of time in Southeast Asia. I spent four years over there, and now I spending more time in South America, discovering this part of the world. I just really enjoy exploring and discovering new culture, new landscapes, new animals, new birds. So I would say the world is beautiful, but, yeah, traveling is debatable because you take a lot of planes, but at the same time, I don't know. I love knowing for myself what's happening over there. So at the moment, I think my big hint was Amazon Forest. I spent some time over there in Ecuador in January, and that was really something very something nice.
[27:33] Dr. Diane: And if somebody wanted to do the kind of work that you do, how do they prepare themselves? What do they do to become a guide to learn and to grow so that they're ready to help other people learn?
[27:49] Gui: There are different ways, I think you need to be passionate about nature. That's something. Because you spend your time sharing with people about your love. And if the love is not there, then it's a bit harder, I think, to share. You need to be a people person also, because you literally spend all your time with people around you at all times. The moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you are surrounded by people, your colleagues and the guests on board. So you need to be okay with that because it's very tiring sometimes, and it takes all your energy. But you must be in love with that, otherwise it's too hard. And then for the job itself, for our job, we need to be able to drive Zodiacs in ice conditions, in windy conditions, wavy conditions. So you need to be at ease with that. So the more experience you have before you come, the better. The easier it's going to be to find a job and to get comfortable in the job. And then there's nothing you can't learn. So even if you don't know anything about Antarctica, there are books, videos. There's a lot of things to learn about. But you need to have a bit of knowledge to share with people, I think. And, yeah, some of my colleagues are scientists. They've been studying and working on the field for years. Some of them have spent winters on bases in Antarctica. Some of them have spent several years in South Georgia monitoring fish and their weather marine life. I have colleagues who've been diving under the Antarctic continent four years in a row. So there's a lot of experience, but it doesn't have to be for me. I just started working on a historical basis for England and that was the beginning of everything for me because I was motivated and I had this patient. So yeah, I would say there's not one way to get to this job. But one thing sure, you need to love nature, people and the ship because you live with a ship all the time.
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[31:02] Dr. Diane: People may not know this about Port Lockroy, but it's the southernmost post office in the world and I think I remember you all did like 19,000 postcards a year, like stamping them to send them out, is that right?
[31:18] Gui: That's really correct. Yeah, 19,000 postcards. That was a lot of postcards. Yeah, it's the one place where you can buy your postcards and add the stamp, return Antarctic stamp and get your cancellation stamp where it's written Antarctica. And yeah, that's the only place we can get that. So it's very special. It used to be a scientific base back in the, it's been shut down in the early sixties and for 25 years now I think or 30 years, something like that, it's been operated as a historical place. So they turned the science station into a museum. And it's very nice because they collected a lot of artifacts, a lot of items that were on the base on the stations in the 40s. So you feel like you're traveling into a time capsule when you go in the base. You really feel like you're back in the you think that scientist is going to come out of the door behind you at any moment. And then you got the post office and you get to buy different selection of postcards and stamps and they're going to eventually come to. Your place and where you send them, because it takes between two weeks to two years to receive your postcard.
[32:29] Dr. Diane: Yeah, I think mine took two months.
[32:33] Gui: Yeah, that's quite average. Two months is an average. Yeah, two weeks is what it takes, if you're super lucky. So, basically, we get your postcards, we cancel them, we put them in a mailbag and we give this mailbag to another ship that will come to visit us in the next days. And this ship has to go to the Falkland Islands, because when you come to Antarctica, you have different options. You can either go only to the peninsula it's a nine to ten days trip, or you can do a trip that goes to the Falkland Islands, then to South Georgia and then to the Peninsula. And the Falkland Islands have the nearest post office, ruled by UK, because it's all about UK here. So we need to send the mail to the post office and then from London, it will be dispatched in the word. So even if you send your mail to from the post office, so it can take a bit of time. So sometimes the bags are lost in the way, because one year, I remember, a ship was supposed to go to Folklore Islands, but they had to cancel their visit, so they dropped our bags in South Georgia and then they were forgotten there for a year. Only the season after she picked them up and brought them to the Falkland Islands. So people finally got their mails a year and a half, I think, after something like that. It was a nice surprise, of course, because you don't expect to receive anything at this stage.
[34:16] Dr. Diane: And you were living with three other people when you were working at Port Lockroy. What were some of the challenges of sort of being on an island for four months in Antarctica?
[34:31] Gui: Yeah, that's right, I was with three ladies for four months on a tiny island. So just to give an idea to people who don't know Port Lockroy, the island is the size of a football pitch, so it's quite small and half of it is strictly restricted to penguins. So we were living on the half a football pitch for four months and there are penguins everywhere, so you can't really go anywhere you want. So basically we could walk, I would say, 500 meters path. And that's it, more or less. So you don't exercise a lot. That was the hardest part for me, not exercising a lot. So some ship would offer us to come early in the morning, but we did it only once. And the challenge is that you are with three people at all time. We had a bunk bed, so only one bedroom, so we would share everything and don't have much time off on our own. But we got along very well. That was very nice. We had an amazing team, honestly, and it was quite easy in the end, people always wonder how you did that, but it was quite easy. It didn't feel like an exercise or like a mission, because we got along so well. It just felt like being with my sisters at night and just enjoying dinner and cooking together, watching movies and going to bed. It was pretty nice. So it wasn't too hard. And we had one day off every two weeks, so every 14 days. And during this day off, we would have a time for us, and we would spend the day more or less on our own on this tiny island. But, yeah, that was okay. That was okay.
[36:11] Dr. Diane: Well, and I love the fact that you still speak with affection about it, and you tend to visit it a few times every season as.
[36:19] Gui: Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. Because our guest likes to go to Port Lockroy to send mails, which I can understand. So we try to go there as much as we can. Although we can't go every trip because it's complicated, the booking the sites and making sure it's on our route is not always possible. But we try to go as much as we can. And every time I go back there, then I see the site again. I see the shop, I see the museum, I see the post office, I see the penguins. And, yeah, it's always good. But to be honest, when I left the island, I was crying crazy. I was so desperate to leave the island. I was so sad to leave my penguin babies behind me. It was really heartbreaking. So the first time when I came back, I was a bit concerned on how I was going to feel. And I think I was quite all right, actually. I moved on, so I wasn't too emotional. I thought I would cry to go there, but it was a different context, and I was okay. I don't think I would go back there because the experience was amazing, and I don't want to take the risk to have a lesser experience. So I'm just happy I did that. And now when I go back, I'm just happy I did that. But no hard feeling or no regrets.
[37:37] Dr. Diane: I think that makes a lot of sense. And am I remembering this correctly? I feel like you got married in Antarctica about a week or so before I met you.
[37:48] Gui: Yes. At Lockroy, actually.
[37:52] Dr. Diane: How many people can say they got married in Antarctica?
[37:56] Gui: Yeah, I know. It's crazy. Yeah, that was really a moment. Yeah, that was great. We made it happen. It wasn't an official wedding because the paperwork would be just too complicated, but the captain accepted to marry us, and the base at Port Lockroy accepted that we would do that at the station. Granted that we wouldn't take any pictures, because as it's not official, they didn't want to say that it was happening. But it was really, really nice and very special. To get married surrounded by penguins. That was cool. But we have a lot of engagement every year, a lot of people proposing their future wife or future husband, and it's always a special moment. I even married a couple this year in Antarctica. Yeah, that was really cool.
[38:55] Dr. Diane: That's really cool. And you and your wife are traveling together, is that right?
[38:59] Gui: Yes, and we're working together now. She's working with me on the ship as a guide, which is great, because I get to share with her all this amazement.
[39:07] Dr. Diane: That is so wonderful. So, last question for you. As you're thinking about things that you hope people will want to learn about Antarctica, things that you want them to know to protect it, what are some of the key takeaways you'd like people to have?
[39:39] Gui: I think whether you have a chance to go to Antarctica or not, it's important to be aware of this very specific ecosystem that is very fragile, because it's made of ice, and ice is water and water, and ice is melting. And the continent itself is covered of, how you say, natural water, not salty water. And we need to make sure that we understand the possible consequences of it melting. And as for the sea ice, it is very important for all the life and all what is happening in Antarctica at the moment. So, as I was saying, it's really the cornerstone of the ecosystems in Antarctica. I'm not sure there's a lot we can do about it melting and about global warming, but I think it's important to understand what would happen if the planet go warmer and if there is anything we can change or do in our life, even if we're not 100% sure it's going to have an impact. If you know for a fact that few things on your life could be changed just for the better, I would say do it because you never know. You never know the impact your actions can have. But if it can have a positive impact, even a small one, I would say do it because you never know, and it can only be for the better.
[41:15] Dr. Diane: That makes a lot of sense. I know that Jane Goodall talks about how it can get frustrating because we think that our actions are like a drop of water, and those drops of water don't matter. But when millions and billions of drops of water get together, then you've got an ocean. And so I think if we all take those small steps, we may not live to see what the consequences will be, but we're at least planting seeds for the future and hoping that we're doing the right thing. Well, thank you so much for being on with me today on the adventures and learning. It has been so delightful to catch up with you again, and I wish you an incredible winter in Antarctica.
[41:58] Gui: Thank you so much, Diane. Thank you very much for having me. It was pleasure sharing with you, too. And, yeah, all the best for you and the change. Thank you.
[42:19] Dr. Diane: If you're looking for ideas for picture books that might get the young explorer in your life excited about Antarctica and especially penguins, here are a couple you might want to try. Why Penguins Don't get Cold. How Animals Adapt to their Surroundings; Penguin Problems; The Frozen Worlds: The Astonishing Nature of the Arctic and Antarctic; Antarctica for Kids; Ten Animals in Antarctica, a Counting Book; Penguin and Little Blue; and Penguins Love Colors. I'll include these books and many others in the show notes so that you have something you can check out.
[43:01] Dr. Diane: Thank you for joining us on the Adventures in Learning podcast. You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning podcast with your host, Dr. Diane.
If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download and let us know what you think and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianadventures.com. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.