Pacific Seabird Group 2017 / by Michael Johns

The Pacific Seabird Group held its annual conference this past week in Tacoma Washington, tame in comparison to last year's venue on the North Shore of Oahu. Still, it was great to here about all the new and exciting research being carried out on seabirds in the face of a rapidly changing marine environment. Last year I presented preliminary results on the drivers of double brooding in Cassin's auklets, work that was recently published. This year I presented new preliminary results on the movement patterns of Cassin's auklets from Southeast Farallon Island, using archival light sensing tags called geolocators. This information will help inform conservation of this species by answering basic questions of winter habitat use and distribution, thus identifying areas of special importance and favorable conditions. Stay tuned for further results.