The Seabird Coordinated Studies group worked on several projects this quarter. The primary project was to upgrade the seabird presentations for the North Pacific fishery observer 3-week training and 4-day briefing sessions.
Shannon Fitzgerald worked closely with Kristy Lewis of the Fishery Monitoring and Analysis (FMA) Division to revise the presentations and provide them to all observer training and briefing sessions held in Seattle. Lewis took on briefing and training duties as well and coordinated closely with the Observer Training Center in Anchorage.
In another project, the FMA Division is providing a much needed service in making database changes to capture what had been in the past "ad hoc" information on seabirds that observers recorded. This information encompasses additional mortalities from third wires or trawl warps, bird storms, sightings of short-tailed albatross, and other seabird events at sea that go beyond the normal sampling routine.
In a separate project, Dr. Ann Edwards is working with the REEM Program to assist on the production of a NOAA Technical Memorandum that reports seabird bycatch from 1993 through 2006, based on the analysis completed by Michael Perez of NMML before he retired in 2007.
