Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Barren Islands Update #3 (18 AUG 11)

It's our first official day off! Wahoo! It's rainy and we're all caught up on work for the moment so we are celebrating with a day off. It's also a celebration because I have officially been in Alaska for one month, to the day. Yesterday we did some work with storm petrel chicks. This work is similar to what we do with puffins, but petrel burrows are much smaller with sharper rocks and a higher chance of getting your arm stuck inside.

The storm petrel chicks are young---about 1-2 weeks old. They are small, gray, unbelievably fluffy and will commence to squeaky chirps when you take them out of their burrow to measure them. Petrels are tube-nosed seabirds, meaning that they have a funny little tubes on the top of their bill. The type we have here are Fork-tailed Storm Petrels, Oceanodroma furcata.


Measuring the tarsus bone with calipers.



Notice the tube nose on this little guy.



(The aww... factor)


Downy stormy petrel chick.


These birds have rather long legs which they use for bouncing off waves as they feed on surface plankton, etc. They aren't that large, about sparrow-sized with rounded gray wings and dark smudged eyes. They feed at sea all day, returning to their nesting burrows to feed their chicks at night. For some reason the birds are phototropic, that is attracted to light, like moths. Apparently in past years stray petrels have cruised through our camp at night because of the lights. Their burrows are tunnels in rocky hilly terrain that are very well hidden. Our work has involved documenting the number of burrows in an area, noting whether they have chicks, eggs, etc., and then measuring the chicks every 5 days in order to get growth progression data. Our camp is in a sandy bowl with slopes on either side arching up to 1,500 ft. peaks. Along these slopes are storm petrel burrows. At night, after 10 and nearer to 11 (when it turns darker) you can hear the petrels returning from sea. Their call is rather squeaky and humorous.


One night we set up a mist net in order to catch a few returning petrels. There is a biologist with the Alaskan USFWS that is studying petrel diet samples. When a petrel is stressed, its reaction is to vomit its meal, therefore, upon hitting the net the petrel will puke up chunks of fish and very concentrated orange fish oil. Our job is to hold a jar up to the tangled petrel, catch the fish sample, untangle the petrel and let it go. We're trying to get 30 samples during the time we're here and so far we've gotten about 8. The puking is a little gross, but I enjoy untangling the birds from the net. It is very delicate work requiring a great deal of concentration and finesse. The trick is to untangle the bird as quickly, but gently as possible so that no damage occurs. It's a skill, like most, that one can only acquire with patience and practice. There is also the added challenge of working solely by headlamp.


Holding a storm petrel upside-down to collect puke sample.


In other news I've been great out here. The work is physically engaging and mindless enough that I have plenty of time to listen to music, think, dream, etc. It's such a wonderful "work" retreat. I still grapple with the question of whether I want to pursue a career as a field biologist. I think what I like more than anything is the lifestyle, living outside, self reliantly with a group of folks you need to depend on and work together with. It feels great to be able to harvest seaweed (something I've fallen in love with out here), haul water, minimize resource use, and live very healthily. I like the challenges that arise, that constantly remind you that you at the mercy of among other things, the weather. I like working with birds and learning more about study techniques. I think I have the head to do the work, but I don't know if my heart is in it. My attraction to this work feels above all selfish. I say that because it allows me to live in an extraordinarily beautiful, remote place and handle birds, both things that few people get to do. I am one of a few humans who invades the nesting territory of these birds to garner data for a brief season. Like all field work, it's a balance between diminishing harm done and maximizing good.


What has been happening here on this island is that in the past year, the river otters have caught onto using the human foot trails that have been worn into the earth by 20+ years of field scientists. These crafty otters are following the trails to the puffin burrows, digging into and stealing chicks from the burrows. This is a predator-prey relationship that is well documented. Puffins nest up high on steep slopes to deter otter predation and the fact that otters now have access to these burrows is not good. Apparently this behavior has just shown up in full force this year. One thought was that what we may be dealing with is one renegade otter who has decided to concentrate its feeding efforts on puffins, or has been pushed onto higher terrain by other otters or scarceness in food resources. It's hard to tell as we never even see the otters. We might set up a trail cam that could capture some images of the otter or otters. In the meantime, I am left to believe that the work we do here is valuable. If nothing else, we have a 20 year pulse of the health of the breeding sea bird population on this island. Yes, the birds would continue to live and breed here without us, unharassed and better off, but we hope that our impact is negligible enough that life will sustain itself.


I am comforted knowing, at least, that those who design these studies are very conscious of diminishing harm to the terrain and bird populations. As an example, in our work, we are shifting to using a camera to take photos of puffins carrying fish in the hopes of using these photos to identify fish species to get information on puffin diet. Currently our protocol to get puffin diet samples involved placing metal fencing screens outside of burrow entrances, leaving them up for 3 hours during which time we hope the parent returns to feed the chick, encounters the screen and drops a fish. After 3 hours we return, remove the screens and collect any samples. This has proved to be a very inefficient way to collect samples and one that does a great deal of harm to the vegetation for very little useful data. By using photographs (assuming they are clear and we can get enough) we can phase out the "screening" practice.


I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to be out here, exploring this work, this place, and myself more. It's a wonderful gift and I'm lucky to be here. I am interested to see how I feel at the end and how this will fit in with my life down the line. Science is immensely interesting to me, but my biggest hangup is this nagging feeling like collecting data, trampling remote, untouched terrain, and handling chicks that have never been touched by human hands is really all worthwhile. I'm sure this is something that many scientists ask themselves their whole career. It's good to continue to question what we are doing. It keeps us sharp and accountable.


Here's a question for you all, "What are the questions you are concerned with in your line of work, be it through your job or another life work you do?"


Warm thoughts to you all,

Margaret

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