Camille Lemonnier, PhD

What’s the work that you do?

My research work focuses on marine predators of the Southern Ocean (especially seabirds). During my PhD, I investigated the inter-relations between at-sea and on-land conditions on the foraging and breeding performances of two Subantarctic penguin species. During my postdoc, I intend on investigating the cognitive processes underlying foraging decisions in seabirds and their link with individual personality and changes in the environment. My work includes fieldwork campaigns in remote places in the Subantarctic, laboratory work and computer work and analyses back in the lab.

What keeps you going?

Field experience has a special place in my work. Field campaigns in the Subantarctic islands, in addition to being a very enriching scientific experience, are also an incomparable human experience. These expeditions are a time for wonder, contemplation, and the opportunity to make room for beauty and life. It is also a new way of life where time slows down and you take the time to think, walk, and observe. It is an ideal that I have sought on my various returns and that has pushed me to take up mountaineering, to rediscover these feelings of immensity, the force of nature, sometimes danger, and to allow myself the time to contemplate and wander.

What’s your message to the world?

One of the main lessons I have learned from these campaigns, and from discussions with people who have had similar experiences, is that another way of life is possible. It is possible to slow down, protect our environment, reduce our impact, and have less without losing quality of life. Solutions exist; we just have to be willing to put in the effort.