World’s Most Remote Post Office in Antarctica Has a Job That Includes Counting Penguins

There are approximately 1,000 gentoo penguins who call Port Lockroy in Antarctica their home. These penguins usually mate with the same partner every year and rear two chicks on nests made with pebbles, mud, and moulted feathers. While some penguins venture out in search of pebbles, others are too lazy. They raid other penguins’ nests and steal pebbles to build their own nests, often prompting “feathered fights” and “penguin highway robberies” in the colony.

This is just one of the many sights that Maggie Coll witnessed during her job as a wildlife monitor in the “world’s remotest post office.” Living in this snowscape for five months might sound like the coolest dream job on Earth, but this job has an unusual job description, which also includes sweeping the ammonia-smelling white-and-pink penguin poop from the snow. Coll is just one of the employees who applied for the batch running from November 2024 to March 2025.

Each year, the post office, a.k.a. Penguin Post Office, recruits four postmasters to live on the island from November to March and do some of the weirdest tasks. The post office doubles as a museum and is owned by the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust (@ukantarcticheritagetrust), a conservation charity that cares for historic British bases on the continent. Each year, the 80-year-old British charity invites candidates to spend an Antarctic summer at this research station, located on the football-pitch-sized Goudier Island, off the Antarctic peninsula below South America, according to The Washington Post.

Each of the hires is assigned a unique role, but the collective roles typically relates to environmental data collection, counting penguins, sorting over 89,000 postcards and letters, maintenance of the historic site, dogsledding, catering to thousands of tourists who pass by in cruise boats, and not to mention the unbearable “stench of guano.” Yes, one of their tasks is to brush and scrub the smelly penguin poop from the rocks. “Most people are probably not so aware of how smelly they are,” Lucy Dorman, who was a base leader at Port Lockroy during the 2019-2020 season, described to The Post.

Snow all around, rocks shimmering like rainbows in sunlight, rookeries of cute mating penguins – the spectacle may sound too spectacular to miss, but officials warn applicants that this is not the most glamorous job they’ll ever do. For five months, the candidates will have to live without internet or phone services. There will be no supply of running water. The team will stay together in a small lodge with bunk beds, a common bathroom, and a common camping washroom. Plus, they’ll get to shower only when the restocking boats and cruise ships will arrive with supplies of food and water.

Additionally, the team members will have to learn how to grapple with “carrying weights.” Dorman shared that there’s a lot of carrying things involved in the job. The members will often have to haul boxes, buckets and jerrycans over slippery snow and rocks laced with penguins’ poopy salads. They will be cut off from the rest of the world for these five months, which means no me-time either. “Due to the terrain, it is not possible to go for a run or take a long walk if you need time on your own. Could you cope with being confined to a small island with four teammates for five months?” was a note in one of the applications, per The Smithsonian.

But all drawbacks aside, the job is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that every new postmaster seems to enjoy. Not only does it offer one a fresh perspective of life, but it also bestows one with vistas that the majority of humans will probably never experience. “You can watch the sun go down and hear the glacier ice melting. It’s an extraordinary place,” said Camilla Nichol, the chief executive of the trust. George Clarke, who was selected for the same batch as Coll, told The Guardian, “I’m looking forward to waking up and having my morning coffee looking out over Antarctica, hopefully seeing a whale too."