Beth Jusino who, like me, works out of the Office Nomads coworking space in Seattle, wrote about the Cooper Island research for the inaugural edition of New Worker Magazine in an interview that answers the pressing question “Do you plan to continue your 39-year-study this summer or might you do something else?”
The Black Guillemot
The Black Guillemot has a number of life history characteristics that make it an ideal monitor of changes in the marine environment in general and the Arctic in particular. Guillemots, of which there are three species, belong to the seabird family known as auks, or alcids. The most abundant seabird family in the Northern Hemisphere, the alcid family includes murres, puffins, auklets and murrelets. All members of the family dive to obtain prey below the sea surface typically in offshore pelagic waters some distance from land. Guillemots, however, are frequently associated with nearshore waters for most of the year, where...
Annual Update on March 27th, 2014 at the Burke Museum in Seattle
You are invited to Friends of Cooper Island’s annual update and fundraiser on Thursday, March 27th at the Burke Museum on the Univ. of Washington campus. Doors open at 6 pm for socializing with beverages and appetizers with a presentation beginning at 7 pm. The evening will include stories and images from our exciting 3-month 2013 field season, which produced an unprecedented quantity of data and insights. We will also talk about how the increasing pace of warming and development in the Arctic is affecting the birds and the bears on the island, and what Friends of Cooper Island is...
Black Guillemot Eggs
Black Guillemots, unlike many seabirds, lay more than one egg. These eggs are from nest J-09.
The chicks have arrived on Cooper Island!
The first Black Guillemot chicks are hatching in the colony this week and they are just as cute as they are fluffy. There are currently 114 nests with parent birds sitting on eggs or brooding chicks which is making this a productive nesting season and gives us a lot to do each day as we monitor the population. I arrived on the island on July 15th and am up early each day, excited to open nest boxes and discover the newly hatched Black Guillemot chicks. It is a busy time for George and I am trying to help by recording...
Seattle science teacher returns from Cooper Island
Katie with nest box. By Katie Morrison Heading back to Barrow, we glide across the glassy Elson Lagoon and it is hard to imagine the wind-driven angry whitecaps that filled the lagoon just a few days before. But tonight it is calm and still and we travel with ease in our open skiff. I am glad to be wearing the precautionary orange survival suit, for though it is a lovely evening, it feels quite cold to me. It’s after ten o’clock at night, the sky is filled with shades of orange and pinks and purples, and the midnight sun seems...
Guillemots Go to the End of the Earth in Pursuit of Retreating Sea Ice
The annual announcement of the minimum extent of the Arctic’s summer sea ice has become one of the more important metrics by which we measure the rate of change of our warming world. This year’s minimum extent of 3.4 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles) on September 16th broke the previous minimum set in 2007 and was half of the average minimum for 1979-2000. This 3.5 million square kilometer loss in ice extent in the last twelve years is equal to an area two times the size of the State of Alaska. After my three months on Cooper Island...