Seabird Oceanography Lab

  

The Seabird Oceanography Lab (SOL) at Oregon State University is involved in research focusing on seabird ecology, movement ecology, oceanography, and integrated ecosystem studies while providing research and educational opportunities for students. We are spread across OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, and OSU’s main campus in Corvallis, with our academic home in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences.

Our research applications range from colony- and vessel-based observational studies to deploying state of the art electronics to study individual foraging, dispersal, migration, and behavior patterns of seabirds. These biologging data are often integrated with in-situ and remotely-sensed measures of prey resources or their proxies or related to human activities (e.g., fishing) or threats. In addition to environmental "bottom-up" studies, we also study the "top-down" effects of predators on seabird population dynamics and life histories. 

Conservation aspects of our research include species restoration, population assessment and monitoring, seabird-fishery interactions, identification of marine important bird areas, and marine spatial planning.

We seek to engage students and the public in seabird science and conservation via social media, community presentations, experiential education, banding programs, webcams, and other means.

 

Help us understand what marine and estuarine birds eat on the Oregon coast.

Submit your photos to Birds with Fish!


FROM THE TOP: PREDATORS, OCEANS & ECOSYSTEMS

FROM THE TOP: PREDATORS, OCEANS & ECOSYSTEMS

FROM THE TOP: PREDATORS, OCEANS & ECOSYSTEMS Feed

Yaquina Head Monitoring Update: the end of the 2023 season

-
Sep 26, 2023

As we’re enjoying the first major rains of the fall here on the Oregon Coast, we now have another year of Yaquina Head seabird monitoring in the books (and the latest one to date)!  We wrapped up our Yaquina Head field season on the morning of September 6th after the fledging or loss of the …

Yaquina Head Seabird Monitoring: Mid-Summer 2023

-
Aug 31, 2023

Hello Everybody! My name is Ricardo Rodriguez, I am the Education and Outreach intern at Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area through Environment for the Americas. I recently graduated from the University of California, Merced with a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences. I am assisting Oregon State University’s Seabird Oceanography Lab’s research efforts to monitor the …

Yaquina Head Seabird Monitoring: 2023 Early Season Update

-
Jul 6, 2023

By Will Kennerley, Faculty Research Assistant It’s once again summer on the Oregon Coast and that means the seabirds are back at Yaquina Head.  My name is Will Kennerley and I’m the newest faculty research assistant in the Seabird Oceanography Lab. Part of my work will include leading the monitoring fieldwork at Yaquina Head this …

Linking Rivers to the Sea(birds): Initial Surveys of River Otter Predation on Leach’s Storm-Petrels

-
Jul 4, 2023

By Eleanor Gnam, Seasonal Field Technician The southern Oregon coast, between Port Orford to the north and Brookings to the south, hosts the largest colonies of Leach’s Storm-Petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous) in the lower-48. Goat Island, half a mile offshore from Harris Beach State Park, is estimated to host more than 100,000 of these small, dusky-colored …

Photographing tufted puffins with bill loads at Haystack Rock

-
Sep 9, 2022

By Sam Eberhard The tufted puffins of Oregon are spread thin among the grassy-topped rock formations that are suitable locations for their burrows. Tufted puffin populations have plunged from above 5000 breeding birds to an estimated 500 breeding birds in 2021 (USFWS coast-wide survey). Understanding this drastic decline, and what prey are currently supporting the …