Maintaining a long-term study of an Arctic seabird on a remote island off the northern Alaska coast has never been easy.  Maintaining that study in 2020, when very few things anywhere in the world were easy, meant dealing with a new set of logistical hurdles and personal dilemmas and sacrifices.  Thanks to the extraordinary help of extraordinary friends, however, in this year of such disruption for all of us I am happy to report that, against all odds, we were able to collect data for the 46th straight year on Cooper Island this summer. During March and April, when I...

On first sight, what most people notice about Black Guillemots in their summer plumage are their bright red legs.   The species could easily be called “Red-legged Guillemot” - were there not two other species in the guillemot genus Cepphus with red legs.

This improbable 2020 field season is finishing its second week. As I anticipated, being back in Utqiagvik and heading out to Cooper Island helped make this bizarre year feel a little more normal.  But once on the island, my initial census of the colony quickly reminded me that, while the entire world is focused on the disruptions and dangers of the pandemic, the repercussions of a melting Arctic continue – as they have for the majority of the 47-year Cooper Island study. In the late 1980s the Mandt’s Black Guillemot colony on Cooper Island had over 200 breeding pairs, thanks...

In early spring, when the first evidence of the scale of the pandemic was becoming clear, many field biologists realized that restrictions or concerns about travel would prevent them from having a field season. The impact was especially bad for graduate students and early career researchers who had worked hard to obtain funding and prepare for the 2020 field season. It also was a major blow to those of us who have conducted continuous long-term studies requiring annual field work. Friends of Cooper Island was impacted by the earliest stages of the pandemic when we had to cancel our annual...