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Geophysicists on the team combined the biologger recordings with infrasound monitoring data from Kerguelen Island in the Southern Ocean to build “soundscape” maps on the birds’ journeys.

The more likely option is meeting with a French Navy ship at the Kerguelen Islands, three to four days away by sail, to transfer Escoffier to that ship and allow Le Cam to continue racing alone.

The study, published in the journal, Ecology and Evolution, looked at the genetic make-up of gentoos living in the Falkland Islands and South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic and Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean.

Other experts had similar thoughts about the world's largest oceanic plateaus: Ontong Java and the Kerguelen Plateau in the southern Indian Ocean.

In the Kerguelen Islands, one of the most isolated places in the world, behavioural ecologist Mary-Anne Lea says she “felt what it’s like to live nearly alone among marine animals, and have sensed just how little we know about these species”.