St. Paul Island; field work 2025
Julia Matteucci, Trish Pence, and Kristen Gorman returned to St. Paul this summer to continue their work on seabird non-breeding movement and habitat selection. The team is [...]
St. George Day 6
Last day on St. George, and it felt a little hectic rushing for a flight. Flights only happen on good weather days, and those are the days [...]
Working on a Community Poster
St. George students designed and created the art for a community poster highlighting the annual productivity of seabirds breeding on the Pribilof Islands. A Seabird Report Card [...]
St. George Island Day 5
Day 5. Another very windy day on St. George Island! After some stretching to wake ourselves up, Jillian, Chipper and I made a circular northern fur seal [...]
St. George Island Day 4
Another stormy day, but the sun shone. This morning, Jillian and Chipper learned about the diving reflex, and how seals conserve oxygen use while diving by [...]
St. George Day 3
Stormy weather, and it was nice to be cozy indoors this morning. We talked about a St. Paul Island seabird research project that is finding out where black-legged kittiwakes [...]
St. George Day 2
A stormy day! After continuing learning about how much we depend on the oceans for climate regulation, transport, and food, Jillian and Chipper worked on brightly colored [...]
St. George Bering Sea Days
Although Bering Sea Days has been postponed on St. Paul Island, we decided to go ahead with activities on St. George Island. Miraculously, the weather allowed me [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Letters, summer, and ice-cream!
Eighth-grade students (ages 13-14yrs) from St. Paul Island have just sent another round of pen pal letters to their friends on the Commander Islands in Russia. It [...]
2021 Seabird Report Card
It’s Fall, and time for the Alaska Maritime Refuge’s annual Seabird Report! […]
Sea Duck presentation
Brian Uher-Koch is a wildlife biologist with the USGS Alaska Science Center in Anchorage, and his research concentrates largely on Arctic breeding waterbirds. […]
Steller’s Sea Cow
Imagine sitting high on a cliff and looking down through the clear water to watch these huge animals slowly rolling around in a kelp bed below! I [...]
new letters from the Commander Islands
New letters from the Commander Islands, Russia, arrived today and will forwarded on to the students on St. Paul Island. One of the letters included this beautiful [...]
St. Paul Island field sketches
Students attending Seabird Camp 2021 had a wonderful field trip to the seabird cliffs. After identifying different seabird species and trying to [...]
Mini Camp on the Commander Islands 2021
Creative plans for youth activities during COVID times continue on the Commander Islands. Natalia Fomina led a three day hike this summer, and [...]