Gerald L. Kooyman is professor emeritus and a research physiologist in the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He has made about fifty trips to the Antarctic, and for the last three decades, his work has concentrated on studies of emperor penguins. He is coauthor of Penguins: The Animal Answer Guide. Jim Mastro spent over six years in Antarctica (including two winters) as a laboratory manager, scientific diving coordinator, dive team leader, and research assistant. Most recently, he worked for several years as a technical editor in support of the US Antarctic Program. His coauthored book Under Antarctic Ice: The Photographs of Norbert Wu was named by Discover as one of the twenty best science books of 2004. He lives in New Hampshire.
“Kooyman recounts his tale of one of the most iconic examples of charismatic megafauna in a way that captures both the magnitude of his science and the elegant descriptions and personal anecdotes that transport the reader to the ice (all through the lens of a changing climate). His acts of veritable heroism—raging-river crossings, risky glacial traverses, frequent excursions on figurative and literal thin ice—were simply routine components of his daily scientific procedures.” -- Jessica Ulrika Meir, PhD, comparative physiologist and NASA astronaut, from the foreword