Earlier this summer, aquarists Austin Brayton and Jackie Anderson camped on a remote island in Maine to assist with Project Puffin, an Audubon Society project designed to restore populations of these clownish little seabirds. In this post, Austin introduces us to other seabirds (besides puffins)  also studied with Project Puffin on Seal Island.

June 24, 2014 
Matinicus Rock, Razorbill feeding study

Today I got to do my razorbill feeding study. The razorbills on this island all nest in the same vicinity, on the furthest point away from our living quarters. They are also really flighty, and are very easily scared off and away from their nests by any human activity near them. Anytime we have to do any work in their colony, we limit our time there to just 2 hours, that way they are not away from their nests for too long.

Our feeding studies however, where we watch them and note what food items they are returning with and how large each food item is, last for 3 hours. Our solution to this problem is to creep into the colony under the cover of darkness and be situated in the blind before the birds get up and start moving about and fishing. This morning myself and island supervisor Frank Mayer left the lighthouse at 3:35 am to set up in our respective blinds. It was really awesome to see it gradually get light out and see the birds beginning to become active and finally flying in and landing on the rocks with bill loads of fish. Sometimes they had four or five fish at a time!

Aspen Ellis measures the wing cord on a large razorbill chick

A smaller razorbill chick hitches a ride to the measuring station in Jackie's shirt

For this study, we were watching them with binoculars to identify what species of fish they were returning with and estimating the size of the fish based on how long it was relative to the birds beak, for example 1.5 bill lengths. For this study I was really glad to have my aquarium expertise behind me, as I was able to tell the difference between herring, hake, sand lance and Pollack through binoculars as it flew by me in a birds beak (although it does look slightly different swimming around in my tanks).

One problem that I did have is I got so excited when I saw my first Razorbill return with food that I dropped my pencil and it rolled out of the blind. I pawed around trying to reach it through the floor of the blind, but it rolled off the rock and out of reach. I could not risk scaring the birds off to get it so I dug through my backpack and the only writing utensil I could find was a blue sharpie that I had used the day before for marking tern chicks. I had to laugh at myself writing feeding data down with a large marker in a tiny notebook in the wee hours of the morning. At 8 am, the rest of the team joined us in the colony for a razorbill and puffin productivity study. We are starting to see more and more chicks and we are taking weights and measurements on chicks that are easily reachable.

Tern chick in the middle begging its parents for food just after my feeding study

I even caught this awesome video of a razorbill chick in the process of hatching. The hatching process takes them a long time to complete and we watched for less than 2 minutes before leaving so that the parents could come back.

Video…

In the afternoon I went out to the common tern colony, to do a feeding study on the terns in my study plot.

-Jackie

Earlier this summer, aquarists Austin Brayton and Jackie Anderson camped on a remote island in Maine to assist with Project Puffin, an Audubon Society project designed to restore populations of these clownish little seabirds. In this post, Austin introduces us to other seabirds (besides puffins)  also studied with Project Puffin on Seal Island.

June 21, 2014 
Razorbills (and Puffins)



Despite the program’s name, I spent much of my time as a volunteer for Project Puffin working with other seabirds, especially terns (within Audubon, the program is in fact now known as the Seabird Restoration Program). Another seabird that I got to know was the Razorbill, an awesome bird that I think is really underrated compared to its relative the puffin.

Razorbill with a nice catch | Photo: neekoh.fi (Uploaded by Markos90), via Wikiemdia Commons

Razorbills have a striking appearance and a really interesting life history.  They nest in rocky crevices or burrows near the sea.  Before the chick can fly and when it is still less than half of its adult size it leaves the nest and goes straight for the ocean, accompanied by its father. They will spend months together at sea as the chick learns how to catch fish. Although Razorbills are abundant in Iceland, in the US there are only about 300 pairs nesting on islands in the Gulf of Maine, so I felt lucky to be able to see them.

I got to see a razorbill and puffin chick close up during monitoring of their nests. We sought out their nesting sites among the rocks along the shore. Certain nests are monitored to see how many potential burrows are occupied, when the chicks hatch, what they are being fed and if they survive to fledging. This information helps researchers to understand how these re-introduced populations are faring and how changes in the oceans due to natural fluctuations or to human influences like climate change or overfishing affect them.  Searching for puffin and razorbill nests, eggs and chicks is called “grubbing” and it is hard and dirty work as you have to lie down and stick your head into the crevices between boulders to find the elusive nest sites.

There are two people grubbing in this photo.

But it is exciting when the search pays off!

The black chick on the left is a puffin and the gray one on the right is a razorbill.

Jackie with a puffin chick on the Matinicus Rock

-Austin

Earlier this summer, aquarists Austin Brayton and Jackie Anderson camped on a remote island in Maine to assist with Project Puffin, an Audubon Society project designed to restore populations of these clownish little seabirds. In this post, we join Jackie on Seal Island to check on razorbill and puffin burrows.

June 20, 2014 
Meanwhile on Matinicus Rock, checking on razorbills and puffins

Today we spent the morning checking razorbill and puffin burrows, surveying which burrows had eggs and which burrows had hatched chicks. We also had an exciting event where one of our puffin burrows from previous years, had a puffin in it that had a geolocator attached to its leg. We grubbed the puffin (which means we carefully removed it from its burrow) and removed the geolocator. This is very exciting because, if the data is retrievable from the geolocator, it could provide some incredible insight into where the puffins go when they are not on the breeding islands and could potentially help protect them during the rest of the year.

Matinicus Island Supervisor Frank Mayer holds a puffin while Aspen Ellis removes a geolocator band

Today’s afternoon was also very interesting, as we were joined by a team from US Fish and Wildlife Service. They were installing large antennae on the lighthouse which were designed to download data from transmitters on the backs of terns as they flew by. As they were installing the antennae, we were capturing more terns for them to attach radio transmitters to. The data from this project will help them to determine if there is a change in foraging behavior, meaning how and where they look for food, between when they are on eggs and when they have chicks.

— Jackie

This post is one of a series on projects supported by the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Through MCAF, the Aquarium supports researchers, conservationists and grassroots organizations all around the world as they work to address the most challenging problems facing the ocean.  

In this post, Bryan DeAngelis, working on behalf of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, writes about a shark tagging project in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, that he and Dr. Greg Skomal led.




For scientists who track animals using passive acoustic technology, data downloads are like Christmas morning. This is especially true when the data that comes back is from the sharks you tagged many months earlier. After all the hard work invested to get the tags on the sharks, you don’t know if you have just given a fish a very expensive piece of body art that will never be heard from again or if you’ll provide valuable scientific information that will ultimately improve our ability to


conserve and protect these beautiful animals.  My friends and family who see me off to the Caribbean for these tagging trips regularly ask me:  “What hard work?  You’re off to fish for sharks in the Caribbean!” My response is always the same: “It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.” It typically involves hour after hour on a small boat, getting fried in the sun like a raisin, fishing hook after hook, constantly cutting bait…and smelling like it.  And there is the physical punishment.  Working over the gunnel of a boat in 4-foot seas to surgically implant a small tag in a big fish will leave you with some very large bruises across your sternum. But truth is, I love it.  And one of the reasons I love it is because of the data downloads. 

Passive acoustic telemetry has been a game-changing technology for biologists. It’s a method of tracking animal movement over long periods of time using sound. It works by placing a series of sound receivers in the area of study. Each receiver can “hear” within a range of a few meters to hundreds of meters, depending on the surrounding conditions. The animals to be tracked are tagged with an acoustic transmitter, which periodically sends a unique sound signal. When that sound signal is picked up by one of the receivers, it records the transmitter identification number as well as the date and time it was heard. The battery life on each transmitter is from months to years, essentially giving biologists the ability to track marine animals for very long periods of time. But here’s the catch:  If the animals don’t ever swim within the range of your receivers, you will never hear from them.  And when it comes to sharks, an animal that is typically classified as a highly migratory species, you keep your fingers crossed very, very tightly every time you tag and release a fish with a transmitter.  

A small incision is made to implant the transmitter, and then stitched, prior to release.

Through the generous support of the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF), my colleague Dr. Greg Skomal and I have recently completed our second year of a pilot study to track sharks around Buck Island Reef National Monument in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The Buck Island Monument, which was established in 1961 and expanded in 2001, is one of only a few fully marine protected areas in the US National Park System. The 176-acre island and surrounding coral reef ecosystem support a variety of native flora and fauna, including several endangered and threatened species. Recently, a collaboration of multiple researchers was formed to initiate an extensive study on the ecology of multiple marine species over all trophic levels within the Buck Island Monument. These researchers from various organizations are using passive acoustic technology to study a number of species, ranging from demersal fishes and invertebrates to sea turtles and sharks. To streamline efforts, reduce costs and broaden spatial coverage, each team of researchers contributed acoustic receivers to build a massive array (Figure 1), which allows us all to track the movements of these animals over a broader spatial scale. Such an effort would typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the participation of multiple researchers greatly reduces those costs. Our work ensures, and will continue to ensure, that sharks are incorporated into this ongoing multi-species coral reef study, which is one of the first of its kind.




The value of apex predators to coral reef communities is becoming more apparent. Scientists increasingly understand that apex predators, like sharks, exhibit tremendous top-down effects on our coral reef ecosystems. For example, the absence of sharks may actually cause coral-dominated reefs to convert to algae-dominated reefs. As a result, major initiatives to protect and conserve sharks through the implementation of sanctuaries are being considered in some parts of the world. However, there is very little understanding about how to effectively implement such strategies for the greatest conservation impact. For example, many of the ecologically important Caribbean shark species utilize entirely different habitats during different stages of their life, and therefore will be exposed to different threats with different rates of vulnerability. Also, there is very little understanding of residency time, home range and site fidelity for sharks in this region. Without a better understanding of these relationships between habitat use, species and life stage, implementing conservation strategies such as sanctuaries and Marine Protected Areas may be limited in effectiveness.   

In 2013 and 2014, we acoustically tagged 20 sharks representing four species (Figures 2, 3). We have had two data downloads spanning more than a year since then … and we did not get coal in our stockings.  The results have been really exciting! Of the 20 sharks tagged, only one was never heard from again. In total, we have recorded more than 37,000 detections. While it’s still very early and a lot more tagging and analysis has to happen, we are very encouraged by the preliminary data.  Most sharks exhibited strong site fidelity to the Buck Island monument (Figure 4). 

Detection history plot of two juvenile lemon sharks tagged in 2013.  The data demonstrate strong site fidelity and habitat preferences within the Monument.  These two sharks have used this marine protected area exclusively for over a year.

Also, the data are revealing valuable insights into habitat use within the monument by the different species and age classes of sharks, and the rates of movement outside the protected waters of the monument.  Ultimately, we want to provide resource managers and communities with science-based information that will help them to implement the most effective conservation strategies for sharks.  While doing our part to conserve and protect sharks is what keeps Greg and me involved in this work, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I also get the excitement and anticipation of a new Christmas present whenever a new data file shows up in my Dropbox.   

Bryan DeAngelis (foreground), working on behalf of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, and Dr. Greg Skomal, of Massachusetts Marine Fisheries, led the acoustic tagging study of sharks in St. Croix, which was supported in part by MCAF.

Thanks to the efforts of three conservation entrepreneurs, a Minnow may help save the ocean. In this case, the Minnow is a fish-shaped skateboard made from recycled fishing nets by Bureo Skateboards.

The Minnow, as seen on the Bureo website

The Bureo team, David Stover, Ben Kneppers and Kevin Ahearn started this project in Chile to keep derelict or discarded fishing nets out of the water where they could entangle and kill countless marine animals. Instead of becoming deadly drifters in the ocean, these retired nets are being turned into a great new product, the profits of which can sustain the recycling program over the long term and raise awareness of marine debris worldwide.

The Net Positiva team observes artisanal fishermen at work off the coast of Concepcion, Chile. The team’s net collection and recycling program will help to keep large nets such as these from being discarded into the ocean. Photo: Kevin Ahearn

The New England Aquarium is proud to have helped launch this project with support from its Marine Conservation Action Fund and is thrilled to see that the huge success of Bureo’s “Net Positiva” program has now attracted a seed investment from Patagonia.

“Bureo is not your typical startup – they’ve invented an incredible recycling program by rallying the fishing industry in Chile to turn plastic ocean waste into a great product,” said Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario. “We’re investing in Bureo’s vision to scale their business to a global level and make a serious dent in the amount of plastic that gets thrown away in our oceans.”

Patagonia’s investment comes through its $20 Million & Change fund, which they launched in 2013 to help innovative, like-minded startups bring about solutions to the environmental crisis and other positive change through business. Or, in other words, to help entrepreneurs and innovators succeed in “working with nature rather than using it up.” Read more in Patagonia's media release.

Here's the Bureo Team with some quick thanks for the Aquarium’s support getting their project off the ground:



Congratulations to the Bureo Team on their well deserved recognition and support from Patagonia. We are looking forward to seeing this great idea spread across the globe!