Thorne Lab Happenings
Albatross research on South Georgia- first field season at Bird Island!
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...
Deep Divers of the New York Bight – July 2019 Research Cruise
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...
Marine mammal madness in the New York Bight!
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...
Introducing Master Matthew Fuirst!
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...
Methods in UAS marine mammal research from coast to coast
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...
Thorne Lab Represented at PSG meeting in La Paz, Mexico
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...
Congrats to newly-minted MS, Julia Donaton!
Congratulations to Julia Donaton, who successfully defended her Master’s thesis, “Diet analysis of loggerhead sea turtle diet in New York waters”, on November 6! Julia’s presentation discussed her findings on changes to loggerhead diet over a 25-year period, and how...
Lesley and SoMAS professor Hyemi Kim receive NSF CAREER awards
Lesley and Hyemi Kim, an atmospheric scientist also at SoMAS, were both recently awarded prestigious NSF CAREER awards for their research: https://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/2017/11/10/two-somas-faculty-recipients-of-nsf-career-awards/
Matt Fuirst presents at the Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative Conference
Matt presented preliminary data from his M.S. thesis on herring gull foraging ecology at the 6th Biannual Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative (NBI) Conference on Nantucket, Massachussets on November 4. The NBI conference brings together biologists and naturalists...
Press release for our collaborative work generating seasonal predictions of fish and marine mammal distributions
The Thorne Lab is starting a collaborative project with Janet Nye and Hyemi Kim's labs using climate models to generate seasonal predictions of fish and marine mammals. Check out the SBU press release about this work here:...