Julia K. Parrish; University of Washington
$23,392

Coastal observation and seabird survey team

In the first year of SeaDoc Society funding, COASST met or exceeded the benchmarks outlined in its original proposal. We recruited 28 volunteers (25 proposed) at 13 sites (7-10 proposed), implemented a "smart" web-based data entry system, and can equip more than 50 volunteers (30-40 proposed). We initially concentrated our efforts on the San Juan Islands because strong partnerships with the Whale Museum, Friday Harbor Laboratories, and the local Audubon chapter had already been developed. Within the San Juan Islands, four training sessions and 2 follow-ups were more than sufficient to accomplish our goals for site and volunteer composition. More recently, we've added beaches in Puget Sound as well as other San Juan Islands (Lopez, Shaw and Indian).

By recruiting heavily in the San Juan Islands, we created a concerted network of volunteers at a diverse array of sites on both San Juan and Orcas Islands (19 and 9 volunteers at 8 and 5 sites, respectively). In fact, four of COASST's San Juan locations were beached bird survey sites for Adopt-A-Beach (AAB) in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Because COASST recently inherited the AAB dataset and has re-initiated surveys at some of their former sites, we now have a longer historical baseline against which we can examine future trends.

Our results for 2000-2001 are outlined in COASST Reports 00-01 and can be downloaded at www.coasst.org. In summary, COASST volunteers documented two significant mortality spikes across all regions: one associated with post-fledging events (e.g., juveniles starving at sea) and the stress of the post-reproductive season (e.g., adults exhausted after breeding) and two, "winterkill," when strong storms and other extreme temperature, wind, and weather events affected marine birds. Of local note, despite the relatively low incidence of beached birds in the Northwest Straits, two were found entangled in fishing gear - equaling the total in all other regions combined.

Publications resulting from this research

Hass, T., and J.K. Parrish. 2003. Pairs to plenty: COASST's monitoring and partnering patterns. Proceedings of the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound Research Conference, Vancouver, Canada, 2003. (PDF)

Presentations resulting from this research

Hass, T., and J.K. Parrish. 2003. Pairs to plenty: COASST's monitoring and partnering patterns. Georgia Basin/Puget Sound Research Conference, Vancouver, Canada, 2003. (PDF)