By Carmen Philemonoff

The first thing we did Monday morning was get up at 7:00 a.m and eat breakfast. After we ate breakfast Ann Harding met us in our hotel room, and she brought along our Sea Bird Youth Network posters. We practiced saying our parts for about an hour and then got started to leave for The Bird Treatment Learning Center (Bird TLC). At the TLC the workers help injured animals from all over Alaska. There we also saw and learned about the injured owls. At the end of the meeting before we left we gave donations to a crow (in its beak) and the crow put it in a money jar! After lunch we picked up Cara and went to the opening of the Symposium. At the Symposium we got to listen to Senators Begich and Murkowski’s opening presentations. The part I enjoyed about the Symposium was the afternoon section. There we learned about the late 1980’s Valdez oil spill that affected the growth of Salmon, and the 1964 earthquake in Alaska. After we ate dinner we attended the Poster session where we got to look at other people’s posters on things like Northern Fur Seals and King Crab, and other seabird work. After we observed and asked questions, we went to our Sea Bird Youth Network poster so other people could learn about our sea birds and our project. We got quite a few people interested in our poster, and they asked a lot of questions. I’d have to say we all did well!  After the Poster session Carley, Destiny, Sonia and I all felt comfortable for our presentation on Tuesday.