St. Paul: The group started the day by studying Tonia’s insect collection, 
then Ram gave a slideshow on currently blooming wildflowers. Students worked on plant ID worksheets and then had a field trip to Lake Hill. A group of several Penn State botanists and paleontologists talked about plants and volcanic activity on the island. Flowers were collected to identify and press back in the classroom. And, the day ended up with a bonfire and yes…swimming! A fun day for all.
St. George: The team split up today, with Carmen, Dani, Ashley, and Erick joining the Refuge team to measure kittiwake chick growth below the store. Six chicks were measured. Dani was shocked by the ticks, and Robert was pooped on. On the other side of the island, the rest of the team caught least auklets with Ann. A dream team- we caught 18 birds, most with food. We regrouped at the school in the evening for a talk by Nobuo Kokubun and team on their work with data loggers on seabirds. We learned what an accelerometer is, and are excited to learn where the kittiwakes and murres spend their winter. We then counted the number of zooplankton (mostly Calanus copepods) in a least auklet chick meal (total count was 667), and did some very rough calculations to get an idea of how many zooplankton a colony of 80,000 breeding least auklets would need to catch per day. We came up with 1,173,920,000….. A LOT! Imagine how many zooplankton would be eaten over a breeding season (about four months)… and all within about 40km from the island!