Sea Birds
No comments The Palmer LTER is organized into research components studying ranges of organisms from microbes to top predators. Today’s pictures focus on the seabird component (B-013) of the Palmer LTER Summer Cruise.
One of their responsibilities is to conduct ship-based seabird and mammal censuses. These are conducted from the bridge of the ship while we are on the sampling stations as well as during the transit between stations. Information we collect includes: latitude/longitude of the start and end points of the transect, transect time, ship speed, habitat type (open ocean, iceberg zone, pack ice, etc.), percent ice cover, ice type, ocean depth, sea surface temperature/salinity, wind direction and speed, and of course the species and number of individuals of the seabirds we observe.
Today’s observations
In the above photographs, you can see one of our birder team members Nick Matheny hard at work (he’s the one with the binoculars). The other photos are of a white-chinned petrel (lower left), grey-headed albatross (center), and a black-bellied storm petrel (upper right). While conducting our seabird censuses, we also record any marine mammals that we observe, represented here by a crabeater seal looking up at us curiously as we pass by the ice flow it just recently vacated.
The crabeater.
