Photo courtesy of Clair Sapilewski, SOC-CAS/BA '26.

Gabe Castro-Root, SOC/BA ’25, had a confession to make before he launched into a presentation about his reporting expedition to Antarctica in December. He had underestimated the magnificence of the flightless birds who call the southernmost continent home.

“I was a little bit skeptical about the hype around penguins before we got there,” the journalism major said during an event at the McKinley Building January 29. “I was wrong. They’re amazing. It was fascinating to watch them.”

During a campus event before fellow School of Communication students, Castro-Root shared his new polar perspective—and stunning photos of a rookery of penguins and more captured on his Canon EOS 6D Mark II camera during the immersive experience to Earth’s final frontier.

Photo by Gabe Castro-Root.

In the fall, AU’s journalism program was selected as a media partner by FUTURE of SPACE, which aims to elevate young voices in journalism, inspire global dialogue, and foster partnerships for the planet’s future. As the lone AU student selected out of more than two dozen who applied through an SOC essay contest, Castro-Root called the journey “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“My first thought [when I heard I’d been selected] was, this has to be too good to be true,” Castro-Root said. “Antarctica has always been a place [where] I’d love to go at some point—and a place I’d probably have to save up money for years or decades to get to.”

Castro-Root joined a small crew of media—including climate journalist Ann Curry and Antoine Sanfuentes, CAS/BA ’89, former vice president and managing editor of CNN’s Washington Bureau—who were there to report on what they saw. 

From its wildlife and towering mountains to its colossal glaciers and industrial history, Antarctica is much more than a “huge field of ice,” Castro-Root said. He and about 200 other passengers on the 10-story Seabourn Venture explored Elephant Island, the site of caves where explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew were stranded for several months in 1915 and survived by eating seals and penguins.

Photo by Gabe Castro-Root.

The travelers also surveyed Deception Island, an abandoned whaling station operated by the Norwegians until the 1970s, and got up close to glaciers and icebergs on inflatable Zodiac boats.

Antarctica is one of the most vulnerable areas on the planet due to global warming. Since the 1970s, the Southern Ocean has absorbed as much as 75 percent of the excess heat created by humans. Antarctica is losing ice mass at an average rate of 150 billion tons per year, according to NASA.

Castro-Root wrote several pieces about his experience for Space.com, including an interview with two Ukrainian soldiers who fulfilled lifelong dreams by embarking on the trip. He’s currently freelancing other stories to local and national media organizations, including a story for Smithsonian magazine about the challenges facing Antarctica’s more than 700 trillion krill—creatures who have an important role in capturing and storing carbon at the bottom of the ocean.

Photo courtesy of Gabe Castro-Root.

Beyond its icy waters, Antarctica’s unique landscape makes it a prime location for studying the climate, looking for meteorites, examining Mars’s climate in similar desert-like conditions, and better understanding space and astronaut nutrition.

During the expedition, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, ocean conservationist Celine Cousteau, former NASA astronaut José Hernández, and actor William Shatner led daily seminars about topics like Antarctica’s ecosystem, space, climate change, and exploring the world.

“After Neil would give a presentation, there would always be someone who would go up to him and say, ‘I’ve always wondered this thing about the universe,” Castro-Root said. “He would attract a crowd, and he [could] just keep going and going for literally hours answering people’s questions. The next presentation would start two hours later, and he’d still be talking to people. He exudes knowledge, so he was an incredible person to have around.”