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.

 

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FROM THE TOP: PREDATORS, OCEANS & ECOSYSTEMS

FROM THE TOP: PREDATORS, OCEANS & ECOSYSTEMS

FROM THE TOP: PREDATORS, OCEANS & ECOSYSTEMS Feed

Photographing tufted puffins with bill loads at Haystack Rock

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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 …

Notes from the Field: Columbia River Estuary, Oregon, USA

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Jul 27, 2022

BY ALEXA PIGGOTT In early July, the Cormorant Oceanography Project seabird team, myself (Alexa Piggott), Adam Peck-Richardson, and Rachael Orben, traveled to the Columbia River Estuary, at the border of Oregon and Washington, to capture and tag adult Brandt’s cormorants. Our goal was to test the performance our latest GPS/GSM biologging tags made by Ornitela. …

Yaquina Head Seabird Monitoring: July 2022 Update

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Jul 14, 2022

By Yaya Callahan, NSF REU INTERN Hello everyone! The Seabird Oceanography Lab is almost midway through the field season here at Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area. The murres have not been able to incubate eggs this year and we are expecting a year of no reproductive success. We are continuing our monitoring effort and are …

Notes from the Field: Hawar Islands, Bahrain

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May 16, 2022

By Adam Peck-Richardson The Cormorant Oceanography Project made its first visit to the Hawar Islands, in the northern Arabian Gulf, in early December 2021. Myself (Adam Peck-Richardson) and collaborator Dr. Sabir Bin Muzaffar (United Arab Emirates University) spent four days visiting the Socotra cormorant colony at Rubd Al Shariqiya, a 1.5 km wide desert island …

Notes from the Field: Midway Atoll (Pihemanu)

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Mar 2, 2022

By Scott Shaffer This was the rainiest and windiest conditions we’ve experienced at Midway over the years. Despite the weather, the albatross field crew of myself (Scott Shaffer), Henri Weimerskirch, Sarah Youngren, and Dan Rapp deployed nearly 80 data logging devices on Laysan and black-footed albatrosses over two weeks during the last half of January …