After a 20 hour trip involving a bus, a plane, light rail line, ferry, and foot, your SEANET blogger at last arrived in Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada. It is apparently a beautiful place, though all your blogger has seen of it thus far has been the ferry terminal and the inside of the conference hall. SEANET (both Sarah Courchesne and Julie Ellis) are here to attend the 1st World Seabird Conference, and this morning has been filled with presentations on the topic of marine debris, most notably plastics, and its effects on seabirds across the globe. SEANET hopes to add to that conversation with some of the work we have done on Greater Shearwaters.
Tomorrow, Julie will co-chair her symposium on seabird colony restoration, and she has been frenzied with work on that daunting project. Hopefully, both of us will manage a bit of tourism before we head back to New England.
At the moment, the presentations are about to start up again, but look for another post before my departure to Boston on Friday.
I am wondering whether the use of plastic net fragments in Northern Gannet nests is going to be addressed. These fragment entrap and kill both chicks and adults. See my post on this topic: http://tinyurl.com/2ww6moo