Yang Liu and Vikrant Shah, from North Eastern University, launch a drone from a Greenpeace inflatable. They will later use machine learning to do automated count of penguin colonies on Elephant Island. The drone counts are later compared to the manual counts done by another team of scientist.
Drones are sometimes a less invasive and often faster method of counting penguin colonies and especially useful in the harsh mountainous landscape where the researchers can’t access.
Greenpeace is in the Antarctic to investigate the impacts of the climate crisis as part of the Protect the Oceans Expedition, a year long pole to pole ship tour, campaigning for the establishment of ocean sanctuaries to safeguard this frozen region and its penguins, seals and whales, and to help address the climate emergency.

(This picture was taken in 2020 during the Antarctic leg of the Pole to Pole expedition under the Dutch permit number RWS-2019/40813)