Observing Seabirds Understanding Oceans

Bill's career exceeds three decades of ecological research. Starting as an intern marine ornithologist working on the Farallon Islands in 1981, Bill spent 15 years as the Director of Marine Ecology at PRBO Conservation Science before establishing the Farallon Institute. Bill has conducted a number of "plankton to predator" studies in the California Current large marine ecosystem, and has written about climate effects on seabirds, marine mammals and fish. In recent papers, Bill described dramatic and abrupt ecosystem changes in response to climate variability. Bill serves on many scientific panels, notably as the Chair of the Advisory Panel for Marine Birds and Mammals for the North Pacific Marine Science Organization and Scientific Advisory Committee for implementation of the State of California's Marine Life Protection Act. Bill has presented to state and federal policy-makers on the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems, and how to best design and use the nation's new ocean observing systems.

Just another fellow who likes auks and remote islands. I spend most of my time drinking peppermint tea in a blind and wondering what kind of seabird I’d be happiest marrying.

My research is focusing on seabird population dynamics, movements, and ecotoxicology.

Bob held a chair of Seabird and Fishing Interactions at the University of Glasgow and subsequently worked for MacArthur Green as Principal Ornithologist. He was a member of the Board of Scottish Natural Heritage (statutory advisor to Scottish Government on conservation policy) for eight years. He has maintained long-term studies of seabird ecology at Shetland, making annual trips to the remote island of Foula every year from 1971 to 2010 (and occasionally since then), supervising over 60 PhD students in that time.

Seabirds biologist working on seabirds in both off coast of South Africa, Antarctica and Prince Edward Island. Special interest in foraging, population and demographic parameters and conservation and protection of gtheir habitats.

Megan is a biological oceanographer focused on understanding factors that drive species demographics, distributions and movements. Megan’s work spans multiple trophic levels, scales and ecosystems, and utilize innovative tools and approaches. She leads the seabird research for the Palmer Station Antarctica Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program with efforts focused on breeding biology, foraging ecology, behavior and migration to understand mechanistic processes and climate change impacts.

Maggie Lee comes to the Farallon Institute with a cumulative twelve years’ experience in monitoring and researching seabird colonies in Maine, Hawaii, and San Diego, CA. She has a B.A. in physics from Reed College, but a passion for all things seabird. Her previous research has focused on seabird-forage fish interactions and has led her to an ecosystem-based approach to conservation. Maggie Lee joined the Farallon Institute in 2021 to conduct research on the breeding ecology and disturbance of seabirds on Alcatraz Island and to study marine predator diet.

I am a BAS Emeritus Fellow having retired in 2022. I previously led the Conservation Biology group for over 16 years. I participated in 23 Antarctic field trips, having been involved in predator tracking studies for over 20 years. I am especially interested in how seabirds utilize their available habitat and how this relates to their reproductive output and performance, including in the context of climate change and fishing pressure.

Tycho has led the seabird research and monitoring in the Røst archipelago, North Norway since the early 1980s, and been instrumental in establishing and coordinating similar long-term work across 18+ other keysites in Norway and Svalbard. He also headed SEAPOP from the start until 2023 and has represented Norway in a range of international working groups on seabird conservation and research.

I am an evolutionary ecologist with a specific interest in the causes and consequences of within-individual change in life-history traits and between-individual variation in life-history strategies. I mostly conduct analyses on long- term individual-based datasets collected in wild populations, and have so far had the pleasure to work on great tits (Parus major), pre-industrial humans (Homo sapiens), jackdaws (Corvus monedula) and common terns (Sterna hirundo).

University of Western Australia; Murdoch University

Jean-François Rail started to work as seabird biologist for the Canadian Wildlife Service in 1995, just after finishing a master’s degree in biology. He has since documented the status, distribution and population trends of seabirds breeding in the province of Quebec, in Canada. His work also includes studies of seabird breeding success, chick growth, diets, foraging, etc. with emphasis on the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem and the Northern Gannet.

Jefferson Hinke leads seabird research for the U.S. Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program within NOAA Fisheries. He earned Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC – San Diego in 2012. His research focuses on the ecology of Pygoscelis penguins and their interactions with fisheries, changing food webs, climate, and other environmental stressors that affect the marine ecosystem in the Antarctic Peninsula region.

Passionate seabird and island restoration ecologist.

Philippa has worked with little penguins for 20 years and began at the Ōamaru Blue Penguin Colony in 2006. She developed a research programme, using both long-term monitoring data and foraging research to better understand little penguin ecology and potential impacts of climate change on the species. She has continued to drive the science work at the Colony to improve conservation outcomes and provide support to other little penguin researchers in New Zealand.

Professor Daniel Oro is an ecologist at the Center for Advanced Studies of Blanes, Spain (CEAB-CSIC). His research focuses on population dynamics, conservation biology, and ecological resilience, with a particular emphasis on seabird and island ecosystems. He has contributed significantly to understanding human-wildlife interactions and their ecological implications. His work bridges academic research and practical conservation efforts globally.

Works with seabird breeding and feeding ecology and behaviour since 1979 generating long-term data series for purposes of ecosystem conservation and sustainable management. Presently full time researcher and professor at the Institute of Marine Sciences at Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. Has also worked with Comcaac people (native American group living along the east coast of the Gulf of California) to help record and preserve traditional knowledge about birds and their environment.

I retired in 2012 after 37 years as a Research Wildlife Biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, over which time I conducted studies of seabird reproduction and feeding ecology at numerous colony sites around the coast of Alaska. Since retirement I continue to work under the auspices of the Institute for Seabird Research and Conservation, a nonprofit founded principally for the purpose of developing a field station and continuing long-term seabird research and monitoring on Middleton Island in the Gulf of Alaska.

After a PhD on seabirds at the Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé and a post-doctorate at Tour du Valat, I joined CNRS in 2001. I am studying the ecology, demography, population dynamics and impact of global change on seabirds, and regularly carry out fieldwork in the Southern Ocean, Antarctica and France.

I am a project leader of Atlantic Puffin population monitoring program in 12 colonies around Iceland since 2010, and project leader of the Icelandic nocturnal seabird monitoring program since 2017.

Lindsay is a seabird ecologist who has specialized in the conservation of albatrosses over the last twenty years. She has worked on assisted migration and breeding colony restoration across Hawaii and the Pacific. She now oversees the research program for Pristine Seas at the National Geographic Society whose goal is to help countries across the Pacific create marine protected areas.

I am an ecologist with a broad background in zoology and marine biology, with a special interest in seabirds. My focus is in the field of conservation biology, and I am particularly interested in the effects of environmental changes on the foraging ecology, population dynamics, physiology and phenology of seabirds. I have worked with both tropical and cold-temperate species, particularly focussing on southern rockhopper penguins, Antarctic fulmarine petrels and northern fulmars. Since 2019, I am part of the Norwegian Seabird Population Monitoring Programme SEAPOP (www.seapop.no/en) and work at the SEAPOP-keysite Sklinna. Here, the main focus is on European shags, but I also work with Atlantic puffins,  common and black guillemots, razorbills, herring and great-black-backed gulls.

Heather is a professor of marine biology at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John). Her research interests include seabird responses to ocean warming, patterns of movement, population dynamics, and response to introduced predators. Heather has led the monitoring and research at Machias Seal Island since 2016.

Scientist responsible for long term research on seabirds and endangered New Zealand birds. Focused research on the endangered Takahe, a flightless rail, and the Red-billed gull on the Kaikoura Peninsula. The Red-billed gull study followed over 5,000 individually colour-marked birds over their lifespan to quantify age lived, frequency of breeding, number of partners, number of chicks fledged, pair-bond duration, and causes of mate change.

I am a seabird ecologist with a special interest in how environmental changes and human activities impact seabirds' demography and population dynamics, phenology, behaviour and evolution. At the moment I focus mainly on how species adapt to a changing world and on finding solutions to enhance their conservation status. I am part of the SEAPOP group in Norway, and am responsible for the monitoring on the Hornøya keysite. I work with several species, including common and brünnich guillemot, atlantic puffin, razorbill, black-legged kittiwake, European shag, herring gull and greater black-back gull.

Seabird ecologist interested in new methods for studying seabirds in the field, including sailing drones, automated sensor system and Artificial Intelligence.

Chris has been studying the ecology of seabird communities across the Eastern Indian Ocean region for the past 33 years.  Based at the Houtman Abrolhos, an archipelago of 195 islands in Western Australia.  He is currently researching oceanographic impacts on breeding, community ecology, GLS/GPS tracking, demography and impacts of marine debris in nests of terns, noddies and shearwaters.

Thierry has been interested in seabirds for a while. After a first visit to the Shetland Islands in 1983, at the age of 15, he came back few times, notably to watch puffins and great skuas interacting on Hermaness. He went on to veterinary studies at Alfort National Vet School near Paris, and then into a Master and PhD in ecology on host-tick interactions and breeding habitat selection in kittiwakes on the Cap Sizun colonies, Brittany. In 1998, with support from the French Polar Institute (IPEV), he set up with collaborators what eventually became a >20 year study on kittiwakes on Hornoya, northern-Norway. Since 2015, he is the principal investigator of ECOPATH, a French Polar Institute (IPEV) project on the ecology of infectious disease in seabirds in Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (Crozet, Kerguelen and Amsterdam islands). He recognized early that seabirds and their parasites and pathogens represent fascinating systems to address basic and applied ecology questions, from spatial population ecology to comparative immunology and conservation. 

Dr. Boersma is the Director of the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels at the University of Washington in the Department of Biology and holds the Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science. In the 1970’s she started working with Galápagos penguins to determine how many there were, and now is trying to expand their population by providing high quality nests. Fork-tailed storm-petrels in Alaska kept her busy for a decade, and her Magellanic penguins studies in Argentina continued for over 40 years.

Dr. Jaime Jahncke is the Director of the California Current Group at Point Blue Conservation Science and an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University’s Estuary & Ocean Science Center. With a PhD in Biological Sciences from UC Irvine, he brings over 30 years of experience in marine science, focusing on ocean conservation, sustainable fisheries, and protecting wildlife. Jaime leads a dedicated team, working with partners from government agencies, academia, and nonprofits. His work has taken him from Peru to Antarctica, Alaska, and California, all aimed at finding solutions to protect our oceans and the life they support.

Tim Birkhead FRS is emeritus professor of behaviour and evolution at the University of Sheffield. His research on promiscuity and sperm competition in birds re-shaped our understanding of bird mating systems. In addition, he has maintained a long-term study of common guillemots on Skomer Island, Wales since 1972. Since 2014 this study has been funded entirely through public donations

I was first exposed to seabird research on Skokholm, by Mike Harris, in 1963. After graduating from university I studied seabirds at Aldabra, Indian Ocean, for my Ph.D. (Aberdeen) and in the Caribbean, before establishing long-term research on Machias Seal Island, Bay of Fundy, in 1995. Our focus is on population and feeding ecology of the whole seabird community of alcids (3 species), terns (2 species), storm-petrels and eiders, in relation to oceanographic change. I now serve as advisor to Heather Major who is continuing the Machias Seal project at the Avian Laboratory for Avian Research at the University of New Brunswick.

Rachael Orben leads the Seabird Oceanography Lab at Oregon State University. She earned a PhD in Ocean Sciences from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2014. She first discovered seabirds on the Barren Islands in Alaska in 2002. Since then, she has spent many windy days on remote islands in Alaska, Greenland, Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and occasionally in Oregon. Her lab tackles a range of applied conservation and management research aimed at understanding the impacts of humans and changing environmental conditions on seabird populations.

Ash is the Science Manager for Bird Island. Ash joined the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in January 2021, and prior to this worked in Ireland for the last eight years undertaking a variety of research on seabirds and marine mammals. Ash specialises in the spatial ecology of higher predators. Movement is a trait shared by all life on Earth, and Ash’s work looks to understand how the behaviour of individual animals can inform the distribution of species. Ash’s doctoral research focused on seabirds, primarily Northern gannets and puffins, and used tagging technologies to track the movement paths of animals. He has also worked on sharks, sea bass and cetaceans.

Richard is a seabird ecologist at British Antarctic Survey. His research focuses on many aspects of the ecology and conservation of seabirds. He worked on seabirds in Scotland for his PhD and first couple of postdocs, then shifted focus to the southern hemisphere and has led the BAS research on albatrosses, petrels and skuas since the mid 2000s. He works closely with the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and BirdLife International to help develop strategies to improve knowledge of seabirds, their threats - particularly from fisheries and climate change - and conservation.

I've been working in seabird research and conservation for over 10 years, including in the UK and the Falkland Islands. I took up my role as Seabird Ecologist with Falklands Conservation in 2022, leading on the Falkland Islands Seabird Monitoring Programme  FISMP) and other seabird related work. 

I've been working in conservation and environment for over 30 years, and in the Falklands for the last 15. I started out in seabird research, and to this day it still remains important part of my work due to the many conservation challenges faced by this group.

Helen studies the influence of climate change and human activity on the distribution and demographics of marine species. She is passionate about using science to identify and improve promising approaches to conservation that lead to healthy ecosystems and communities. Helen completed her doctorate at the University of California, Davis where she studied the biophysical responses of plankton to natural and human-driven environmental variability in the California Current. As part of the Global Seabird Working Group, Helen leads statistical analyses to interpret regional and global patterns in seabird demographic trends. Helen is also an adjunct professor and former high school science teacher who prioritizes inclusive teaching, mentorship, and community participation in all aspects of her research.

Erendira is majoring in Environmental Science and is hoping to continue her education to learn more about seabirds. Over the past summers, Erendira was able to go to Alcatraz Island and be part of Bodega Marine Lab’s tours to talk to tourists about seabirds as ecosystem sentinels. Her favorite part was having people realize that something they think is simple, a seabird, can tell researchers and scientists so many things about ocean health.

Julie has worked in the California Current marine ecosystem for three decades, with a brief hiatus on the north coast of Brazil. She studied at UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis in Marine Biology/Ecology. Julie has conducted research on a variety of top predators (marine birds, mammals, fishes) and their prey in relation to ocean climate. She has worked on forage fish population dynamics, quantified predator diet and bioenergetic consumption, analyzed prey thresholds across predator taxa, and developed seabird indicators for forage fish. She integrates these into frameworks of ecosystem considerations for fisheries management. Recently she has become involved in predicting future abundance of commercially-important fishes off the US West Coast relative to changing ocean conditions. At the Farallon Institute, Julie leads the seabird field science program on Alcatraz Island in California, USA. Julie is also a Research Associate at the UC Santa Cruz Institute of Marine Science, has participated in various federal and state working groups, and collaborates regularly across a wide range of institutions.

Sarah Ann is an ecologist who participates in studies of climate effects on top predators, climate variability in the California Current, and predator-prey relationships in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. She manages Farallon Institute’s at-sea seabird and marine mammal observations database, as well as processes the acoustic krill data collected each year off the California Coast. Sarah Ann also coordinates the Global Seabird Working Group by centralizing breeding success, dietary, and prey availability datasets from around the world. 

Brian is a marine ecologist who works on the foraging behavior, habitat associations, and spatial ecology of seabirds, and tries to incorporate these perspectives into spatial models of seabirds and their prey. Brian has worked on marine or aquatic birds within California, Alaska, Maine, Nova Scotia, and Wisconsin, and works now both in the office and at sea, participating in 2-3 coastal surveys per year. Brian has also worked in marine science education and outreach, having spent three years teaching university science courses while mentoring undergraduate students on independent and collaborative research projects. His current focus is on linking at-sea and colony estimates of seabird abundance within the context of marine climate change, and developing internship and outreach opportunities that help improve diversity and equity in the next generation of marine scientists. Brian provides ecological analysis for the Global Seabird Working Group. 

Gammon works as a data analyst with the Global Seabird Working Group, helping to curate data used in analyses and publications. He joined the Farallon Institute after earning his Master's Degree from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and focuses on investigating the response of different species to changes in the environment.

Marisol has a background in physics and atmospheric science, but she's an oceanographer at heart. She has studied coastal upwelling for over 15 years, focusing on its variability, how it relates to climate, and how it impacts its marine ecosystem. Her current research focuses in two areas: how climate change, variability, and extreme events impact habitat conditions for organisms (in Eastern Boundary Upwelling regions and in the North Pacific and Bering Sea), and how remote sensing temperature and salinity compare to in situ data in these challenging regions. Marisol lends her oceanographic background to the Global Seabird Working Group to help answer questions on how different seabirds are responding to changes in the oceans.

Trond is a principal scientist at the Farallon Institute and his research has focused on three different, but complementary research directions: 1) ecology of early life stages of fish, 2) ecosystem processes, dynamics, and variability, and 3) ecosystem-level consequences of climate change. These research foci have grown from various post-doc and research positions both in the U.S. and in Norway over the last ten years. He is also engaged in international working groups in ICES and ESSAS. He provides both oceanography and climate backgrounds to the Global Seabird Working Group, helping answer questions about how seabirds respond to complex oceanographic processes like stratification.