Time passes strangely when you’re writing a book. When I was writing An Inconvenience of Penguins—the book about my quest to see every penguin species on the planet—periods of long inactivity were followed by frenzied expeditions for the birds. Then the seasonal window would close, and I’d go back to waiting for it to reopen.
Eventually, dragging myself over the finishing line, the list was completed – I had visited all 18 wild penguin species in their natural habitats. I’m not sure how long the afterglow lasted, but it dulled the moment several new penguin species were named in 2026. In the five years from this book’s conception to publication there were just 18 penguins, now all of a sudden there are 22.
The shock of the new species
As someone who has spent a chunk of their life fixated on seeing 18 species, this increase is of course deeply annoying and monumentally inconvenient. You need not apologise if you also find it confusing. To be clear, there are no new penguin species, not in a true sense – there has not been some marvellous discovery in our age of growing ignorance, no voyage to some hitherto unclaimed region of Antarctica. Rather, the ornithologist mafia have been at their maddening abacus and decided to adjust the numbers in a process known as splitting.
As is mentioned in one of the final chapters of my book, there was already talk of adding an Eastern Rockhopper to the Northern and Southern species. This has now been accepted as a fact. Those birds are found around the Subantarctic islands below Australia and New Zealand. The addition of this species was not a surprise to me but had not been confirmed at the time of writing. Far more upsetting has been the recognition of three new species of Gentoo penguin.
Three!
This split has seen their numbers go from one to four, meaning there are now Southern Gentoos (on the Antarctic Peninsula), Northern Gentoos (on the Falkland Islands and Tierra Del Fuego), Eastern Gentoos (neighbours of the Eastern Rockhoppers) and, worst of all, Southeastern Gentoos. These are by far the most vexatious because they are primarily located on the Kerguelen Islands, which dangle somewhere between the Indian Ocean and Antarctica, among the most remote landmasses in the world. They are visited by virtually no outsiders.
The spiritual home of the penguin
Now I spend my days trying not to think about those birds and instead focus on the happier times of my long pursuit. Inevitably, this takes me back to the Antarctic Peninsula, the continent’s most accessible arm. For most of human history, no one knew it existed. Then, for several colourful, occasionally upsetting decades, men ripped themselves apart trying to explore it. Only now is Antarctica really a destination for people. For many millions of years, however, it has been home to penguins. It’s hard to really grasp just how long the birds were shambling up and down the frozen coasts before human beings even existed, much less travelled the world to come and see them.
There are certain places from my penguin quest that I know it’s unlikely I’ll ever see again, but revisiting the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia is a certainty that offers me comfort any time my mind drifts towards those new Southeastern Gentoos. The sanctuary of Antarctica comes in part because it is my favourite place in the world and because penguins are guaranteed, but at the risk of sounding like a dead-eyed mercenary, I also go back every year because I’m paid to do so.
When the research for the book began—back in the happy days of there being just 18 penguin species—my visits to Antarctica were still pretty rare. But when the quest began in earnest, I was able to secure work as a polar guide, meaning I could suddenly guarantee multiple visits a year. In the four years since that career began, I’ve never been certain whether this was coincidental or some kind of cosmic ordering; I asked the Great Penguin for more access to the ultimate penguin destination, and my wish was granted.
Sharing a love of penguins
On board with Aurora Expeditions, I mostly teach photography. Naturally, I also use this work to make subtle and occasionally shamelessly overt mentions of my book. Perhaps this seems a little cheap to you, but if you’d spent years of your life dedicated to penguin pursuits, perhaps you’d do the same.
Of course, the audiences for these sales pitches are perfect for me. After all, many of them have made their extraordinary journey to see the birds. Perhaps for some, that will develop into an obsession, as it did for me, but for many more it will simply be enough to see penguins on land and in the water – goofy in one medium, pure elegance in the other.
Despite accruing all that time and all those miles to see penguins—and ultimately gaining the ability to know better—I still think of the birds as Antarctic animals. Just five of the 18 species actually breed in Antarctica, and globally more penguins nest on soil than ice, but even so, when I close my eyes and think of a penguin, it is porpoising out of a near-frozen sea, or standing on land, braying at the sky while a colossal glacier stretches into cloud cover behind it.
Annoyingly the penguin I usually think of down there is a Gentoo and prior to returning this season, I worry that seeing them—and if we have to be specific now, then it’s seeing a Southern Gentoo—will serve as an upsetting reminder that their Southeastern cousins remain out of my reach for now.
South Georgia’s penguin pageantry
Consolation will also come this year on South Georgia, where a few hundred thousand King penguins will make for the finest kind of distraction. I am often asked which is my favourite of the species, and I get the sense that people expect me to be even-handed in my response. What’s the point? The answer is the King, the prettiest of all penguins, a strutting, trumpeting regent that literally and figuratively holds its head high.
Kings are the best because they are astonishing from up close and far away. In proximity, their fabulous gradients on their necks are a wonder, but when they amass in multitudes, they provide one of nature’s most spectacular sights. It’s been over a decade since I first experienced these mega-colonies but now there’s much to enjoy in showing others. In places like St Andrews Bay, leading a hike to a viewpoint which overlooks perhaps as many as half a million birds is a chance to lead others to a childlike glee. When we first crest that hill, I get as much from looking at the reaction of passengers as I do from the babbling sea of penguins below.
The problem with such an experience is that it leaves you wanting more. Seen the Kings of South Georgia and the Adélies of Antarctica? How hard would it be to push on? To see the Northern Rockhoppers in Tristan Da Cunha, or the Royal penguins on Macquarie Island perhaps? Reader, let me tell you it is very hard, and complex, and requires luck that you may or may not have – no matter how much you will it to happen, nor how expert the leadership is on your ship.
Take the word of someone who knows: seeing all the world’s penguins is not a wise way to spend your time and money. I have to believe that, even now as I drift off online, and try to work out how to get myself to Kerguelen for those stupid new Gentoos.
An Inconvenience of Penguins by Jamie Lafferty is out now in paperback.
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