by Angela Szesciorka, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
In March the MS211 class (Ecology of Marine Turtles, Birds and Mammals) climbed onto a small inflatable boat, pointed offshore, and ran a half mile obstacle course through rocks, waves, and seals to Año Nuevo Island.
This tiny boat (named Dragon Rojo!) carried us to the island. About an eight-minute boat ride though, so not bad. Photo from Oikonos.org.
by Angela Szesciorka, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
A few Sundays ago — Super Bowl Sunday, in fact — I took a three-hour walk along the beach at Fort Ord in Monterey, CA with Don Glasco, a systems engineer and former cartographer.
This wasn’t a leisurely pursuit, but my volunteer service to the Sanctuary Integrated Monitoring Network’s (SIMoN) Coastal Ocean Mammal and Bird Education and Research Surveys, also known as Beach COMBERS.
I meet Don at Fort Ord Dunes State Park in Marina around 9 a.m. After downing the last of my coffee, we head out into the foggy morning.
Don Glasco referring to the almighty bird book to identify an unknown species by its toes.
by Jackie Schwartzstein, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
Most of us remember the song from childhood:
‘Toe bone connected to the foot bone, Foot bone connected to the leg bone, Leg bone connected to the knee bone…’
But here at MLML the students in the Marine Birds and Mammals class (MS 112) are quickly finding that what we learned as kids just doesn’t seem to apply anymore! The skeletons of birds, marine mammals, and turtles are MUCH more complicated than the sweet little bones ditty implies. Have the animals changed since I was in fourth grade?! What exactly IS the ‘foot bone’, anyway?!
Rear limbs of the California Sea Lion.
Photo by Jackie Schwartzstein
Can you find the foot bone?
By Catherine Drake, Invertebrate Zoology Lab
In early June, I went camping with my family in Southern California at El Moro Campground, a part of Crystal Cove State Park. While there one day, I was excited to learn that there was going to be a -1.8 foot tide at 6 am. So, the next morning, my mom and I woke up bright and early and made our way to Corona del Mar Beach.
Corona del Mar Beach at a -1.8 foot tide early one June morning. Photo by Catherine Drake.
The last time I visited Corona del Mar Beach, which is a relatively unknown tide-pooling location, was about two years ago. I noticed that in this two-year span, this particular rocky intertidal ecosystem changed drastically: the mussel beds expanded, less surfgrass canopied the habitat, and both crustose coralline and red algae filled the void. Ochre sea stars, once abundant on the northern part of the beach, are now flourishing about 100 yards south for better access to the mussel beds.
A flourishing mussel bed (Mytilus sp.) in the rocky intertidal. Photo by Catherine Drake.
A shore crab (Pachygrapsus sp.) eats a limpet as it moves through the intertidal. Photo by Catherine Drake.
A uniquely neon green anemone (Anthopleura sp.). Photo by Catherine Drake.
This was by far my favorite tide-pooling experience. I spotted organisms I had never seen in the rocky intertidal before, such as a Hopkin’s rose nudibranch (Okenia rosacea). I also was witness to feeding behaviors I had not previously seen, such as a crab eating a limpet as it traversed the rocks, and an egret moving within a tide pool with such delicacy to find its prey, an oblivious fish.
An egret prevails in its hunt for breakfast. Photo by Catherine Drake.
by Angela Szesciorka, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
“The latest tool in wildlife biology is a garden spade,” says Ryan Carle, as he happily describes his work with Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, a nonprofit working worldwide to improve biodiversity conservation and increase understanding of human impacts on marine ecosystems.
Ryan started this fall as one of Moss Landing’s newest students, but has been working with Oikonos as a project biologist for two years on seabird habitat restoration on Año Nuevo Island.
Ryan surveying the island. (photo: Oikonos)
Año Nuevo Island, part of Año Nuevo State Reserve, is located roughly half way between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. It is a critical breeding habitat for seabirds and marine mammals, including the Rhinoceros Auklet, burrow-nesting seabirds similar to puffins.
Auklet chick. (photo: Oikonos)
Check these birds out!
You can get up close to birds and whales at Open House without scaring them or getting wet! The Vertebrate Ecology Lab has many cool birds on display – its amazing how many different birds we have in and around Monterey Bay. And you can even take a peek at a tiny baby whale!
Make sure to see the baby whale!
Thousands of sooty shearwaters descend on Monterey Bay each summer. (photo: E. Loury)
Monterey Bay is not only a tourist attraction for visitors from all over the world, it is also a destination spot for animals from across the globe. Some animal visitors swim the distance, like the leatherback sea turtles that journey from the beaches of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Others just wing it for thousands of miles, like these seabirds called sooty shearwaters that hail all the way from New Zealand in flocks of hundreds and thousands.
Researchers think that the rich feeding conditions in the California Current are a major attraction for these long journeys. MLML student Melinda Nakagawa put satellite tags on some sooty sheaterwaters to track their movements. For her thesis, she is investigating how the birds move in relation to physical forces, such as winds and currents – such information will help us better understand these birds’ epic migrations.
How DO marine ornithologists catch the birds they study? Sometimes, it’s just like catching fish!
Of course, first you’ve got to find the birds. The oceans are HUGE expanses. They can be difficult to navigate, and birds can fly literally hundreds of miles in a single day! Luckily for biologists, the most predictable place to find seabirds is actually on land, on a breeding colony during their reproductive season. So, how does a biologist catch a seabird while it’s on a colony? Amazingly, many seabirds exhibit no instinctual fear of humans while on their breeding colonies, and if they nest on flat ground then researchers can simply walk right up and touch them!
Albatross census. Photo: USFWS
In many places where birds nest on cliffs they also exhibit little fear when humans lean over from the top, just a few feet above them. This allows biologists to employ a modified “fishing” pole, with a slip-knot noose, to grab a bird (loosely!) by the neck, nudge it off its perch, and gently guide it through the air (as it flaps in a startled flurry!), back up to the cliff top where measurements, blood draws, and other work can be done.
Photo: N. Jones
How can it be that these animals, which routinely fly thousands of miles in a year, would just sit there and allow themselves to be captured on their breeding grounds? Wouldn’t this lack of caution put the breeding birds at great risk of predation? Yes, but… many seabird colonies are located on relatively small and terribly remote islands, and in prehistoric times, as the birds evolved their breeding habits and reproductive strategies, there were NO land predators whatsoever! This is because many of these remote islands emerged as the tops of ancient volcanoes, which oozed and spewed and built their way straight from the depths of the oceans, and so were never associated with any parent land mass.
As such they remained for eons in isolation, free of any land predators. Seabirds find these types of islands particularly suitable for breeding. Without many foreign disturbances, they are left to partition the breeding habitat amongst themselves to a maximal extent. Often, this means some VERY dense nesting aggregations!
Everyone knows how you catch a fish: With a net, or with a pole, right?
NOAA ship Oscar Dyson, Bering Sea, 2010 (photo: N. Jones)
But, how do marine scientists manage to catch sea birds? Can’t they just “fly away”?
Black-footed Albatross, NE Pacific; (photo: Bert Ashley)
Of course, most species can do just that! So, how to get your hands on these shy creatures? Wouldn’t it be nice if the birds just gathered in groups, like so many fishes do?
Fish aggregations recorded by echosounder
Wait …
Seabirds DO gather in groups – to nest at their breeding colonies,
Seabird colony on Buldir Island, Aleutians (photo: N. Jones)
… and sometimes at sea in large, drifting “rafts”!
Auklets (-Least, -Crested, -Parakeet), Buldir Island, Aleutians (photo: N. Jones)
…So, how to catch seabirds … hmmmm?
author Nate Jones, with a feathered friend
Author: Nate Jones
It’s early June, and there’s still ice in the Bering Sea! This year the seasonal ice cover has persisted late into the “spring” time. Much later than in recent years. In fact, it hasn’t felt much like springtime here on the water; it’s snowed (or, is it frozen fog?) on many days, and the mercury in the thermometer outside pools listlessly at about the 32F mark, even at high noon. To be sure, the ice is melting, breaking up into pancakes, jumbled, layered, and amalgamated by spring storm waves and wind… but, sloowwly, slowly… the water is still cold; as cold as the ice itself. A reluctant catalyst, at best.
(ice) pancakes, anyone? It's June 2nd...
We are surveying on the R/V Thomas Thompson, a University of Washington UNOLS ship. This is an ice-reinforced vessel, so we can push (carefully!) through this kind of cold slurry in search of oceanographic data. The scientists on this cruise are primarily interested in measuring the physics and chemistry of the spring ice retreat, and the rich plankton communities that tend to bloom and grow during this transition time. Like the first spring buds and shoots of green in a garden, the explosion of microscopic marine algae, diatoms, and copepods forms the base of a food web that will sustain all the fish we eat, and the seabirds, seals, and sea lions that also depend on them. So, this is a very important time of year in the Bering Sea!
Sea Ice
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