Counting Penguins: An Interview with Kazuoki Ueda
Photograph courtesy Kazuoki Ueda
Kazuoki Ueda fondly remembers bird watching in his childhood in Japan. “I like[ed] watching their behavior,” he explains (K. Ueda, personal communication, March 26, 2025). “That is my method.” Decades later he would find himself counting penguins in South America.
The 70-year-old high school teacher sits across from me in a hotel tea shop in Tokyo. He is soft-spoken but his eyes shine with enthusiasm. ““I’ve been [to] Peru and Chile and Argentina twenty-three times. Watching penguins and counting them and supporting the researchers’ activities.”
Mr. Ueda is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Penguin Specialist Group. “We have to count [the] wild population every year,” Mr. Ueda says. “So we need fresh data.”
“It sounds like hard work,” I say. Mr. Ueda laughs.
“Do you think so? But it’s very interesting. Again, basically, I’m a bird watcher. Counting, counting, counting.”
“Do you have a favorite memory?”
“[The] most impressive memory I had is [my] first visit to [a] wild penguin habitat in New Zealand. [It was] after the first IPC [International Penguin Conference] in 1988 with Dr. John Darby and Dr. P. Dee Boersma. We [were| watching Yellow-eyed penguins. So we [could] see their calling, their high tension calling. [Have you ever heard] the call of Yellow eyed penguins?”
“No,” I say.
Dr. Ueda lets out a trill. “Very beautiful song. That [was a] very, very impressive memory.”
Photograph courtesy Kazuoki Ueda
“Can you understand the meaning of these cards?”
Mr. Ueda takes out a deck of playing cards. Instead of hearts and spades and royalty, the cards feature illustrated penguins of all different species.
“Oh!” I point to the writing in one corner. “It’s the IUCN red list!” The IUCN red list categorizes animals into their threat status, from Least Concern to Extinct.
“We’d like to use these cards [for] educational activities,” Mr. Ueda says. “Promoting the conservation of penguins. This kind of method is very important to promote the conservation activities to all people, especially children.”
4 of the 18 penguin species in the world are classified as Endangered by the IUCN. As of 2024, African penguins are considered Critically Endangered.
Mr. Ueda asks, “Do you know Dr. Lloyd Davis of Otago University?” Dr. Davis, a scientist, author and filmmaker, is regarded as a world authority on penguins. “He said to me, ‘penguins are sentinels’. They [tell] us the crisis of the earth, especially global warming, climate change, and the situation of the oceans all over the world. So studying penguins and promot[ing] conservation activity is very important for us.“
“Do you have a favorite penguin species?”
“Yes I have. Gentoo penguins. So active. They are interested in everything. Like a child. I saw them, they [were] watching human beings. And walking close to me and watching me.” He laughs.
Gentoo penguins. Photograph courtesy Kazuoki Ueda
Kazuoki Ueda is more than just a bird watcher. He has written, translated, or supervised over a dozen books about penguins – from children’s books to penguin encyclopedias – and penned countless newspaper and magazine articles. He has even been involved with a number of television and film programs, including the 2006 animated film Happy Feet and the award winning documentary March of the Penguins (2005). For three years he worked as an educator of educational activities for the Tokyo Zoological Park Society (TZPS), and throughout the years he has supervised the habitat and collections of facilities throughout Japan.
“There are over 100 zoos and aquariums [that] have their own penguin collection in Japan,” Mr. Ueda explains. “We have about 4500 penguins in Japan. Almost half of them [are] Humboldt penguins. Because before 1965 […] many Humboldt penguins were imported from Peru and Chile to Japan. So […] to promote the conservation activity of Humboldt penguins is our duty.”
Mr. Ueda shows me a booklet, titled in both English and Japanese: International Conference on the Conservation of Humboldt Penguins. “So we held this kind of conference. This [was] the first Humboldt penguin conservation conference [in] the world and that [was in] 1998 in Chile. This one [was] held by IUCN. And our PCJ [Penguin Conference Japan] sponsored [it].”
Mr. Ueda is one of the founding members of Penguin Conference Japan, a non-profit organization which focuses on promoting and supporting penguin research.
Yet these conferences and counting expeditions are about more than just research and statistics. There is a sense of camaraderie, the kind you’d find at a sporting event, with everyone uniting over a common interest.
“We are all penguin people.” Mr. Ueda smiles. “No nationalities. We are just loving penguins.”
Originally posted on the Penguins International blog
The IUCN red list of threatened species. (n.d.). IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. https://www.iucnredlist.org/
University of Otago. (2024, September 30). Professor Lloyd Spencer Davis. https://www.otago.ac.nz/profiles/centre-for-science-communication-lloyd-spencer-davis
プロフィール « ペンギン会議研究員 上田一生 Official Web Site. (n.d.). Copyright (C) Kazuoki UEDA. http://www.penguin-ueda.net/profile