A lot of science involves thinking of questions you want the answers to, and then figuring out how to get them. Many times, it requires finding a way to see something the naked eye can’t see—things that are too big, too small, too fast, too far away, or otherwise hidden from view.

That’s the problem with understanding how penguins feed their chicks. The bustling colonies around Palmer hold thousands of penguins. They’re nearly identical, and they disappear underwater when they go out to feed. To solve the problem, the CONVERGE penguin team attaches satellite transmitters to a couple of dozen penguins each season. The data that comes back tells them how far the penguins have swum and how deeply and how often they’ve dived. It’s a glimpse of the answer to the question, and every transmitter helps expand that glimpse.

In the last few days we’ve gone along with the penguin team to see how they put transmitters on penguins and how they retrieve them. Click through the slideshow to see what we learned:

The satellite transmitters send data to a satellite frequently whenever a penguin is not diving. The scientists can access the location data each day, even before they have retrieved the tags from the birds. So far this year, they’re finding that the penguins are making short trips and foraging within a few miles of their colonies, Fraser told me. Adelie penguins are capable of swimming much farther than that, so this perhaps indicates that they’re finding plenty of krill in the region near Palmer Station. The penguin team shares their detailed results with the other CONVERGE scientists so that they can decide the best places to sample for krill and to have their gliders investigate. We’ll check back in with those teams tomorrow to see what they’ve found.