Summary

In Antarctica, where the world’s largest glacier meets the sea, a team of biologists has set up a primitive base camp. They have come to study the phenomenon of ‘penguin cities’, giant living laboratories where tens of thousands of Adélie penguins converge in raucous colonies to breed and rear their young.

For Grant Ballard and Viola Toniolo, two young biologists from California, this is the scientific adventure of a lifetime. Using advanced technology and field research, they discover how Antarctic penguins – creatures that already survive on the edge – are now coping with rapid climate change.

In the last decade, fracturing ice shelves, giant icebergs and disappearing sea ice have thrown penguin populations into disarray. As we shall see, the fate of penguin cities may well reveal our own future…