Thorne Lab Happenings

The Thorne lab has been diligently searching the New York Bight for humpback whales since mid-May. After a few days of wishfully scanning the horizon, we finally had three epic survey days filled with humpback whales! We found our first whales very close to shore...

We're very excited to have completed the first season of albatross research at Bird Island, a remote seabird and seal colony in the sub-Antarctic. Research scientist and seabirder extraordinaire Dr. Rachael Orben set out in late November 2019 for the British Antarctic...

It has been a busy year for our ocean monitoring project in the New York Bight! The project, funded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, is an interdisciplinary multi-trophic level project that provides key information on the status of the...

We have recently wrapped up our 2020 gull field season, led by MS student Kim Lato. Kim began studying herring gulls (HERG) and great black-backed gulls (GBBG) at nesting colony in Stony Brook in 2019 as part of the lab’s ongoing gull project investigating gull...

Dr. Rachael Orben set sail for South Georgia earlier this week to conduct field studies on black-browed (Thalassarche melanophris) and grey-headed albatrosses (T. chrysostoma) at the British Antarctic Survey’s Bird Island Research Station. Rachael will be deploying...

Risso's dolphins (Grampus griseus) in the Hudson Canyon area. Photo: Julia Stepanuk   Now in the second year of research cruises funded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, researchers from the...

New York is not typically thought of as a whale watching hotspot, but there are many favorable conditions for marine mammals just off the coast of NYC. Together with the labs of Drs. Janet Nye and Joe Warren from SoMAS, the Thorne Lab began the first of a multi-year...

Matt Fuirst presented his thesis on herring gull foraging ecology and microbiome characteristics along an urban gradient, and successfully defended his MS at SoMAS in July. Matt's thesis represents the culmination of three intense field seasons at three different...

By Julia Stepanuk, PhD student I spent this past week with the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna (GEMM) Lab at Oregon State University learning their protocol for drone flights and gaining experience flying over whales. I saw my first gray whales just...

Matt represented the Thorne Lab at the 45th annual Pacific Seabird Group conference this February in La Paz, Mexico. Matt presented his work in the Foraging Ecology session where he discussed his results from his Master's thesis on differences in herring...