Tom has a passion for wildlife in extreme environments and is working hard to conserve them in a changing world. He leads the Polar Ecology Research Group at the University of Oxford, where he studies penguins to help conserve them, but also shags in the Southern Ocean and kittiwakes and guillemots in the Arctic. Tom first went South during his PhD on Macaroni Penguin foraging behaviour with the British Antarctic Survey, where he instantly in love with South Georgia. His love of the Antarctic Peninsula came a few years later. He now tackles the data gaps that are needed to manage Antarctica head on; counting the Danger Islands, the South Sandwich Islands and the need to understand and manage the krill fishery.

He monitors penguin colonies all year-round using time-lapse cameras, AI and citizen science (www.penguinwatch.org). Since it launched in September 2014, Penguin Watch has had 8 million hits and changed the way we can monitor the Polar Regions. He is a Senior Polar Guide with certification for both poles and has the rare distinction of getting to both poles during the pandemic. 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.