Birds
Western Grebe
(Aechmophorous occidentalis)
Western Grebes winter on the Pacific Coast. There's a good overview of the species at
http://depts.washington.edu/natmap/facts/western_grebe_712.html
SeaDoc's Western Grebe tracking project covered in Argos Forum magazine
Kyra Mills-Parker of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at UC Davis covered the Western Grebe transmitter project in the Argos Forum magazine in an article entitled, "Oil and Seabirds Don't Mix: New Techniques for Tracking Western Grebes After Oil Spills."
Argos Forum covers scientific uses of the Argos satellite tracking equipment used in the grebe study. There's also an interesting article on tracking debris from the tsunami in Japan.
Read more about the study at our Grebe Tracking page.
Here's the link to the publication of the surgical technique: Short-term survival and effects of transmitter implantation into Western Grebes using a modified surgical procedure.
Grebe migrates south
One of the Western Grebes that has been hanging out on San Francisco Bay for almost a year just jumped up and flew down to the coast of Southern California, down near San Diego.
Crazy!
Joe Gaydos, chief scientist for the SeaDoc Society, says, "We had no idea that these guys would move like this and used to think that once they settled in for the winter that was it."
See the rest of the grebe project at http://www.seadocsociety.org/grebe-tracking.
Update 12/15/11: The grebe flew back up to San Francisco! We don't really know what to think about this... Stay tuned.
Western Grebe Completes Migration
On November 4, 2011, the Western Grebe we're tracking migrated back from Southern Oregon to San Francisco Bay.
To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has tracked a complete migration of a Western Grebe. This is an exciting step in our ability to track these birds and, eventually, our ability to identify and manage the threats to their population.
In other news about this project, Joe Gaydos and colleagues recently published a paper about the surgical technique used in this study in the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine. Take a look.
Short-term survival and effects of transmitter implantation into Western Grebes using a modified surgical procedure
Birds and Mammals that Depend on the Salish Sea: A Compilation
Missing Marine Birds Lecture: Audio and Video
On March 8, 2011, Dr. Ignacio Vilchis presented an overview of his Salish Sea Marine Birds project, along with some preliminary results.
Listen to the audio of the presentation:
Download for your computer or iPod: Right-click here.
Streaming in your web browser: Click here to open up a page with the streaming player.
Video coming soon.
Salish Sea Marine Bird Project 2010-2012
In 2010, SeaDoc hired Nacho Vilchis as a postdoctoral fellow to do a two-year investigation into marine bird populations in the entire Salish Sea ecosystem.
Get an audio recording of Nacho Vilchis's March 8, 2011 lecture here.
Birds don't care which side of the international border they're on, but most government and non-governmental organizations in the Salish Sea work only in one country. SeaDoc, however, has a mandate to do transboundary work. We're pulling together the best science done on both sides of the border to understand what's happening in the entire ecosystem.
Grebe Tracking Study
Introduction
Western grebes are in serious decline in Washington State and are one of the species most impacted by oil spills in California.
Evaluation of post-oil spill rehabilitation and survival of grebes has been prevented by lack of suitable tracking capability. Subcutaneous VHF transmitters tear out shortly after implantation and early pilot studies implanting intracoelomic transmitters resulted in 100% failure.
