Covered in guano and surrounded by the cacophony of screaming seabirds, I braved daily dive-bomb attacks from gulls while I researched seabird breeding ecology on the Farallon Islands. The two seasons I spent living and working on Southeast Farallon Island solidified my passion for seabirds. Seabirds are abundant and among the most visible predators in marine ecosystems—yet they remain outside the consciousness of most people.  Negative impacts to seabirds resulting from human activities, often go unnoticed. I am interested in conducting ecological research with tangible conservation applications, focusing on population modeling and foraging ecology, and I intend to use my work to raise public awareness of seabirds. I also feel strongly about the importance of introducing people to the natural world so they can create a personal connection with nature in order to foster conservation of our environment.

Background

Before joining the MLML Vertebrate Ecology lab in Fall 2006, I spent several years as running my own business before getting my BS in Marine Biology with Honors from University of California, Santa Cruz.
I have spent many years working for nonprofit organizations related to marine and seabird conservation—participating in wildlife rehabilitation, environmental education, and conducting research on land and at sea. My interest in marine conservation began with my experiences in wildlife rehabilitation at the Marine Mammal Center. As an assistant supervisor for an animal care crew I was responsible for patients (seals, sea lions, fur seals and otter pups) who were orphaned or injured. While treating individuals suffering from entangled in fishing gear, gunshot wounds or infections, I wanted to make more of a contribution to the population by helping to understand and describe the problems.
Leading natural history cruises out into the Farallon Marine Sanctuary with Oceanic Society got me out on the water regularly where I enjoyed teaching passengers about the ecology of the marine animals, and marine conservation. Although the marine mammals first drew me to the sea, it was the seabirds that really excited me about studying marine life.

Research

In 2003 and 2004 I lived and worked on Southeast Farallon Island as a seabird research assistant for PRBO Conservation Science. We monitored 12 different species of breeding seabirds, and I handled, captured, banded, and monitored birds from ashy storm-petrels to Brandt’s cormorants. My senior thesis examined the prey preferences of pigeon guillemots of Southeast Farallon. After living on an island with over half a million birds, I was hooked on seabirds. I also assisted with seabird captures in the Channel Islands and dissected beach-cast seabirds as part of a seabird health study in Santa Cruz.

 

Computer modeling

As an undergraduate, I developed a demographic population-based mathematical model in MATLAB, to examine how the threatened population of Laysan albatrosses is affected when thousands of chicks die from lead-poisoning on their main breeding colony on Midway Atoll, a National Wildlife Refuge. Our study found that the contribution chicks make to the future growth of the population is much greater than was previously assumed. In 2007, as a direct result of this research, researchers at UCSC with the help of American Bird Conservancy have been working with the US Fish and Wildlife to clean up lead on Midway to reduce the number of lead-poisoned chicks.
As part of a group project at MLML for MS 263 (Data Analysis Techniques in Oceanography), I helped write a MATLAB program that modeled a hypothetical oil spill off the central California coast, monitoring its trajectory and its interactions with important marine habitat zones and beaches. This program used archived current data from high-frequency radar to track the change in position of the oil spill every hour.

Current research:
Have you ever looked out off the central California coastline in the summer and wondered what the millions of black birds on the horizon endlessly streaming by are? These are sooty shearwaters- one of the most numerous seabirds in the world. They breed on islands off New Zealand, migrating across the Pacific Ocean to the rich productive waters of the California current after breeding (boreal summer).
I am currently a Sea Grant trainee supported by a California Sea Grant titled “Connectivity of West Coast Marine Sanctuaries: Tracking Sooty Shearwaters through dynamic upwelling ecosystems in the California Current System” with co-principal investigators, Jim Harvey, Josh Adams and Erika McPhee-Shaw. We want to characterize the movements of non-breeding, migratory shearwaters during the summer months and describe several physical environmental variables that influence upwelling retention areas to which we hypothesis the birds are attracted. In 2008 and 2009, we will use satellite telemetry to track sooty shearwaters after they arrive to the California Current region from breeding colonies in New Zealand. Analyses will involve correlating their movements with certain physical environmental factors.
            My thesis project will be interdisciplinary in nature: working in both the Vertebrate Ecology lab and the Physical Oceanography lab here at MLML. I will be using remotely sensed winds to generate stress fields and helping to design analyses using programming in Matlab that will better characterize the California Current region (and the habitat of shearwaters and their prey). I plan to investigate such parameters as upwelling retention, wind stress curl, and convergence. I will be working closely with lab members in the Physical Oceanography lab to gain a better understanding of the physical oceanography and handling of the extensive data sets. I also plan to look at the diet and foraging ecology of the birds while they are here feeding in the summer. An important component to my research will be to inform the public through outreach and education about how these birds respond to the environment and how human activities may affect them.

 

Other interests

When I’m not wearing my graduate student hat, you might find me chasing my toddler around. I also enjoy being outdoors and on the water, bird watching, knitting, carving woodblock prints, and various other crafts.