Day 78: Fish food

We had our last night of Rhinoceros Auklet netting tonight.  That means we also processed our last fish. Rhinos bring in these fish to feed their chicks and we collect a sample of them to identify, measure and weigh. The species they bring back change every year and, in addition to the Murre and Guillemot diet data, gives us a good idea of what fish are available in the ocean in a given year. This year, Rhino's started out eating a lot of juvenile rockfish, a favorite seabird food, but then switched to Pacific Saury like the one Jen is measuring here. We have also seen a fair amount of squid.

Day 61: Rhino in the net

We completed our first session of Rhino netting tonight. A session consists of four nights of netting for Rhinoceros Auklets for about an hour each night. Rhinos come in just after dark to feed their chicks. They bring back a bill load of fish (they sometimes carry over ten fish at once!) and we set up a net to catch them and collect the fish so we can identify what they are eating/feeding their chicks. Katie is extracting a Rhino that has just hit the net (it didn't have any fish). It's pretty amazing to see what they are finding out there in the ocean and how that changes from year to year. We also band and measure the adults to look at adult survival and condition.  They are don't move around much so we catch a lot of birds year after year at the same sites.

Day 22: Night lights

 We had a brief break in the wind yesterday and the new moon is here which usually means one thing: Ashy Storm-petrel netting! This is one of my favorite activities. We set up a net once it's full dark, play the Storm-petrel call, and get ready to catch some of the coolest birds around. These little seabird are about the size of a swallow, spend most of their lives on the open ocean and can live to be 40+ years old! I was introduced to seabirds through Storm-petrels so I have a huge soft spot for them. Last night I set up my camera to try and capture this nighttime activity. The streaks of light you see are from our headlamps as we extract birds from the net and the glow from San Francisco city lights is on the horizon. To read more about Ashy netting and see what they look like, check out the Farallones blog post here.