Studying South Polar Penguins by Sailboat

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In January 2022, John Bates, curator of birds at the Field Museum, joined eight other researchers and a crew of three on the sailboat Vinson of Antarctica for a month-long expedition. They traveled from the Falklands to the Antarctic Peninsula and the Island of South Georgia to study penguin colonies. The trip covered 3,727 miles across some of the most the remote and breath-taking landscapes on the planet.

John will present a travelogue of the trip brimming with photos and stories of penguins, albatrosses, other birds and marine mammals, like Southern elephant seals and Antarctic fur seals. He will discuss the biology of these creatures what life is like across the southern hemisphere.

John Bates grew up birding with his dad and brother in Tucson, Arizona. After getting his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Arizona, he went to Louisiana State University for his doctorate. While there, he met and married a fellow graduate student, Shannon Hackett. Together, they did post-doctoral fellowships at the American Museum of Natural History in New York before coming to Chicago’s Field Museum, where they have been for 26 years. Over his career, John has traveled to numerous countries in Africa and South America studying the evolutionary biology of birds.