She is an expert on seabirds; she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is Honorary Professor at the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen.
[4] In the 1980s, Wanless began one of the first radio-tracking studies into seabirds in the Northern Hemisphere, which helped to identify the foraging areas and the dangers that seabirds face due to climate change,[5] pollution, fishing and off-shore wind farms;[6] much of this research was conducted on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth in Scotland.
[3] Wanless also studied gannets on Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire[7] and researched the foraging of puffins outside of the breeding season.
[10] Wanless was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to seabird ecology.
[11] Wanless wrote The Puffin with Mike P. Harris, published in 2012 by Bloomsbury ISBN 978-1-4081-0867-3[18] a revised version of the original 1984 Poyser monograph.