November is a time of changing leaves, fall chill, and for the Thorne Lab, Seabird Surveys!
As part of a larger interdisciplinary, multi-level monitoring project funded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Thorne Lab began conducting seabird surveys in the eastern New York Bight region in August 2022. This project entails conducting survey work along four transect lines every 3 months to capture the seasonal shifts in seabird species abundance and distributions in this region.
Crew members Kim Lato and Maddie Foley attentively observing the transect line
On November 1, we conducted our first fall seabird survey, with a crew consisting of PhD students Kim Lato and Nathan Hirtle and MS students Ian Mayway and Madeleine Foley. While we had an extremely productive first two days of surveying, spotting species such as Northern Fulmars, Northern Gannets, and Black Scoters, our second survey day was cut short by the onset of a tropical storm. However, we managed to finish the survey on November 15, successfully surveying all four transect lines for this fall season. We look forward to analyzing this data to investigate species-specific distributions relative to oceanic and biological features. As seabirds are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts such as entanglement in fishing gear, sea level rise, and shifts in prey availability relative to ocean warming, capturing this information is a critical piece to improving seabird conservation in northwest Atlantic waters.
A flock of Double Crested Cormorants observed in the fall survey
Lab members keeping up the positive attitude after a long day’s work!