Inside an active Antarctic volcano, gentoo penguins are flourishing with climate change
Romain Barats/ Ocean Photographer of the YearDeception Island is a "spectacular amphitheatre of penguinness". Amid rusting industrial remains on a flooded active volcano, these photos reveal a rare winner of climate change.
Lopsided whale oil tanks sank into the dark sand. Ancient wooden boats slowly decayed in the brutal Antarctic weather.
Deception Island's whaling and sealing industries had long since been abandoned when Romain Barats arrived. The island he saw was one where the tables had turned: animals now ruled.
Barats, a wildlife photographer, captured the island's post-industrial atmosphere in a haunting series of photographs, one of which (above) was a finalist for the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026.
"The three gentoo penguins almost look like sentinels standing beside the ruins," says Barats. In a purely visual sense, "it's like Chernobyl", he says. "They're places where human activity suddenly receded and nature began moving through the structures we left behind."
Barats' photo reveals a deeper story of how penguins are responding to a world shaped by human influence. The gentoo penguins who star in the image are one of the rare winners of climate change. Gentoo numbers are on the rise in Antarctica. In some areas, they are ballooning – up by almost a quarter along the West Antarctic Peninsula since 2013. It's a sign they may be exceptional among penguins in their ability to adapt as their world heats up.
The penguins in Barats' picture are in the midst of moulting – an uncomfortable time for a gentoo, says Heather Lynch, professor in ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, New York.
"They can't get in the water when they're moulting," says Lynch. "It's itchy and uncomfortable and they get cold very easily."
These three penguins have hauled themselves out of the sea to warm themselves with Deception Island's volcanic heat. The island is, in fact, an active volcano, and the water inside this doughnut-shaped sliver of land is a flooded caldera. Rusting oil tanks – remains of the whaling industry that dominated the island in the early 20th Century – give the penguins further shelter from the wind.
"They're trying to stay as warm and comfortable, for as long as it takes to grow in their new feathers," says Lynch.
It's this adaptability that's helping gentoos thrive.
Romain BaratsWinners and losers
"Gentoo penguins are what we call a climate change winner," says Lynch. "Their abundance has just skyrocketed in this part of the Antarctic because they like it warmer, they can handle it wetter. They just keep moving south."
The global population of gentoos increased by around 11% between 2013 and 2020, with more marked increases along the Western Antarctic Peninsula at 23%.
Meanwhile, the gentoo penguin's two closest relatives – the chinstrap and the Adélie penguin – are climate change losers. Chinstraps have already decreased dramatically across the Antarctic Peninsula. Adélies have also fallen 65% in 25 years on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the majority of their populations are predicted to be in decline by the end of the century.
Besides their ingenuity in finding comfortable spots to moult, what sets gentoos apart?
European Union/ Copernicus Sentinel-2A suite of traits help gentoos deal with climate change. They're not fussy eaters – unlike their two closest relatives, they'll switch their diet from krill to fish and back again depending on what's around.
And if their eggs are destroyed by a sudden flood or a freak snowstorm – something growing more common with climate change, Lynch notes – they can simply lay more eggs. It's an unusual trait – neither chinstraps nor Adélies can lay multiple clutches per season if the first is lost. Gentoos can also radically alter their breeding season to adapt to changes in the climate.
The result of these discrepancies is increasingly evident. "Everywhere we turn in the Antarctic on the peninsula here, we're finding more gentoo penguins," says Lynch. "It's this gentoo penguin takeover."
No penguins currently breed on Deception Island. Eruptions of the volcano over the past 7,000 years have repeatedly decimated penguin populations in the region. Nevertheless, Lynch is keeping an eye out for nesting gentoos.
"If someone were to say, 'Who would be the first to try breeding on the inside of Deception Island?' It would be gentoos," says Lynch. "It would be just so like them to show up and build a couple of nests inside the caldera."
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Despite its eruptions and industrial past, the island remains a unique wildlife hotspot. "The outside of Deception Island is one of the most stunning amphitheatres of penguinness that we have in the Antarctic," says Lynch.
For Barats, it's a place where natural and human forces collide. "You can feel something very powerful," he says. "It's like being confronted with something much larger than ourselves. Geological time, nature, maybe the impermanence of our civilisation."
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