A Webb Slocum glider was launched on Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) launched out of the U.S. Palmer Research Station. The glider mission covered >600 km, providing >1400 ocean profiles. The glider profiles, in combination with Adélie penguin foraging data (from penguins tagged with ARGOS-linked tracking instruments), showed that Adélie penguins in the area of Palmer station forage just at the base of the chlorophyll maximum, which may provide improved visibility for these visual foragers. Current fields and temperature data from the glider resolved a long-standing-issue involving the source of anomalously warm surface waters near Palmer Station, long-suspected to be affecting the community structure of fish populations. The warm water is seen to originate just north of Anvers Island, where the sea ice is retreating excessively early each year (allowing more surface warming), and this water is strongly mixed with the underlying frigid remnant winter mixed layer water as it passes southward toward Palmer Station through a narrow channel between the island and coast. This glider mission immediately answered fundamental questions regarding key mechanisms of ecosystem change, that 15 years of annual station-based sampling have identified but not been sufficient in space/time to answer.