Unangam Tunuu bird names
It’s spring! All over Alaska there are signs of summer’s imminent arrival. Birds are returning from their long winter journeys, people are getting ready to fish, biologists [...]
Interview with Julia Matteucci
It’s inspiring and encouraging to hear success stories of young seabird scientists and their path in this chosen field. Julia Matteucci has just completed her first year [...]
Seabird tracking project update
Julia Matteucci shares this research update on the seabird tracking study on St. Paul Island. 2024 Field Season The 2024 field season was an exciting and [...]
Introducing the Bering Sea Research Center
There is an exciting new project happening on St. Paul Island; the opening of the new Bering Sea Research Center (BSRC). I sat down with Veronica Padula [...]
2024 Seabird Report Card
It’s Fall, and time for the Alaska Maritime Refuge’s annual Seabird Report! Here it is: the 2024 Seabird Report Card Background Although seabirds spend most [...]
Seldovia
Seldovia is a small community located across Kachemak Bay from Homer. Current population size is around three hundred Ann traveled by water taxi over to Seldovia in [...]
Murre banding on Duck Island
AJ and Lenny Laird joined the team for color-banding murres on Duck Island this summer. Thank you both for your incredible help in the field and for [...]
Bering Sea Days: Day 2
Bering Sea Days took over Saturday school, and we spent the morning rotating through the classrooms again. In kindergarten/first grade, Alexis led us through some great games [...]
Bering Sea Days 2024: Day One
Seabird Camp 2024 had to be postponed because of all the cancelled flights to St. Paul this summer, so Alexis and I came out for Bering Sea [...]
Summer versus winter movements of Black-legged Kittiwakes
Marine habitat use by seabirds of the Pribilof Islands Marine Ecosystem (PRIME) Last summer, our research crew spent their first field season attaching both GPS and geolocator [...]
Winter behaviour of seabird biologists
Have you ever wondered what field biologists do during the wintertime when they are not in the field? We’re not quite as busy as during the [...]
Putting up a murre blind
My name’s Leif and I am 11 years old. We live in Cordova, but we travel to the west side of Cook [...]
Cook Inlet Seabird Studies
A seabird is a bird that spends most of its life at sea. […]
Summer field work on St. Lawrence Island
Gavin Rizzolo (grade 8) is from Fairbanks, Alaska. In the summer of 2023, Gavin joined Alexis Will and Adrian Gall on a trip to Savoonga to study [...]
Alaska Bird Conference
Congratulations to Ashley Kushin (Mat-Su Career and Technical High School) and Bay Rose Kauffman (Wasilla High School) for presenting a poster at the Alaska Bird Conference in Anchorage [...]
Bering Island Youth Expedition
Many thanks to the Commander Island Biosphere reserve for sharing this report and photos. Buyan Bay Children Expedition The Commander Islands National Park organizes environmental educational [...]
2023 Seabird Report!
It’s Fall, and time for the Alaska Maritime Refuge’s annual Seabird Report! Here it is: the 2023 Seabird Report Card Background Although seabirds spend most [...]
Auklets and a Family Walk
Our interns had the opportunity to participate in two Least Auklet research and monitoring projects throughout the week. […]
Unalaska and Camp Qungaayux̂
The history of how the Seabird Youth Network sponsored the Unalaska student trip starts back before 2017. […]
St. George Art camp continues…
For the final days of St. George Art Camp we finished up many ongoing projects and started a few new ones as well. […]
St. George Art Camp begins!
Art Camp has been at three-ringed circus of crafting so far this week! We have started lots of marine-based art projects. […]
St. George Island Backpacking Adventure Camp!
We started our adventure with a hike up to the lofty heights of High Bluffs. […]
Camp Day 5: Cracking of crafts and eggstra eggsperiments!
We started the day with a roundabout session of microscopic organisms, games and other activities. […]
Seabird Camp Day 4: Special Guest Day
After our warm-up activities of language learning and games, we set for a special field trip to Ridgewall seabird cliffs. […]
Day 3 Eggsperiments…
Eggs ruled the day as we started with Alexis teaching us all about seabird eggs including all the things that make a murre egg special and ideas [...]
Seabird Camp Day 2
Happy July 4th! Seabird Youth Network and Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge brought a float and face painting booth to the community activities for 4th of July. [...]
Seabird Camp Day 1
Introduction to Eggs! A variety of activities awaited students as they arrived for the first day Seabird Camp. […]
Seabird Camp Preparations
Preparations for Seabird Camp 2023 began with visits to field study locations. […]
First Tracks!
In July, our research team (including Orlin and Kristen) worked hard to begin seabird captures to deploy both global location sensor (GLS) and global positioning system (GPS) [...]
Searching for Study Plots
This past weekend was the project’s first trip to St. Paul Island to assess areas for capturing Black-legged Kittiwake and Thick-billed Murre to deploy geolocator tags later [...]
New Seabird Research on St. Paul Island
Black legged Kittiwake and chick. Photo by Chauncey Many people have noticed changes in the Bering Sea in recent years. We’ve seen increased water and air temperatures, [...]
Videos between Islands
We were thrilled to receive this postcard video from students on the Commander Islands earlier this year. And, we've just put together this video from St. George [...]
St. George Day 8
Last morning of packing, goodbyes, and starting to work on a school bulletin board that celebrates Spring. The board has a theme of red-legged kittiwakes sitting on [...]
St. George Day 7
Day Seven Peaceful weather today, and we made the most of it with some easy time outside. Emma finished her seabird finger puppets, and we talked about [...]
St. George Day 6
Beautiful sunshine and energy today. Emma learned about different seabird species that breed on the Pribilofs and started to make a few seabird finger-puppets. I was able [...]
St. George Day 5
Another windy day, but no rain or snow and the light was dramatic and bold again. It’s hard to capture the wind in photos, the way you [...]
St. George Day 4
The wind has died down slightly, and the snow has turned to rain... Emma got creative with painting wooden fish, and we read that Pacific Halibut was [...]
St. George Day 3
Stormy wintery day on St. George Island. Blowing snow and a cold strong wind made it hard to even walk outside. It was a good day to [...]
St. George Day 2
It was a stormy Saturday on St. George Island, with the west wind gusting 40-50mph; too windy for walking and too rough to be safely on the [...]
St. George Island in February: Day 1
This morning I flew from Anchorage to Unalaska, and then switched onto a smaller plane to St. George Island. I was the only one on this second [...]
2022 Seabird Report Card
It’s Fall, and time for the Alaska Maritime Refuge’s annual Seabird Report! Here it is: the 2022 Seabird Report Card. Background Although seabirds spend most [...]
Camp Aglakh 2022
Camp Aglakh is an annual summer camp held on the Commander Islands, where students backpack across Bering Island while learning about the rich local biology and history. [...]
Introducing the Grub Hub!
Many seabirds that breed on both the Commander and Pribilof Islands lay their egg in either a crevice or burrow. These species include the puffins and auklets. [...]
Seabird Modeling and The Fun Game.
We began the final day of Art Camp making seabird models for our Seabird Colony Diorama. We placed each seabird on the cliffs in the appropriate nesting [...]
Murre Chicks Pop-ups and Kittiwake Landings
We started the day by creating pop-up cards. The outside of the cards featured blue or green murre eggs. The eggs cracked and out popped murre chicks! [...]
The Puffin Boat and The Big Float
We kicked of an eventful first day of Art and Seabird Camp by creating puffin-shaped boats. Building “The Puffin Boat” includes origami, coloring, cutting out multiple stencils [...]
The Grub Hub and The Magical Mural
We started the day by gathering flowers, dried grasses and other found objects to finish construction of our artificial seabird nesting cliff. The cliff is full of [...]
St. Paul Island
Today we had a small number of participants come check out some seaduck stomach samples. Thanks to Amos Philemonoff and Anthony Kushin for gathering and keeping these [...]
St. Paul Island
During the misty early morning, Seabird Camp Intern Ashley Kushin joined her cousin Destiny Kushin, who is working with ACSPI’s Ecosystem Conservation Department, under the Reef Cliffs [...]
Colors of the Past
The 2022 St George Art and Seabird Camp will feature several newly-invented paper crafts, a simulated sea monitoring activity and a mural themed “St. George in My [...]