Red-necked Phalaropes are one of the many shorebird species staging on the Jago River delta. Photo by Shiloh Schulte (taken with an iPhone through a Swarovski scope!) |
Welcome back to our Arctic Blog! After a brief respite, our second project of the summer is now underway in the Arctic. Over the past six years, we have been conducting a survey of the entire coastline of the Arctic Refuge, where southbound shorebirds are getting ready for their long flights. At the same time, we have been helping with another project led by Roy Churchwell, a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and his advisor Abby Powell. Roy is studying the distribution of the invertebrates that shorebirds eat, and learning a great deal about how they influence where the birds choose to spend their time. We finished our coastal survey last year, but are still supporting Roy’s project by sending some of our experienced crew to help out with this challenging project. This year, Manomet staffers Trevor Lloyd-Evans and Shiloh Schulte are working with Roy, along with Olivia Hicks, our volunteer from England, and Eddie Corp, from Bethel AK, who also worked at the breeding camp earlier in the season. These four are joining up with the rest of Roy’s crew to survey and band shorebirds, and sample invertebrates at three camps along the Arctic Refuge coastline. Since I’m back at the office working hard on keeping them all funded and organized, Shiloh and Trevor will be updating you on their work as Roy’s project progresses. Enjoy this first post from Shiloh!
Shiloh Schulte heading out along the flats on a warm and windy morning. When temperatures rise above 50 degrees mosquito protection is usually essential. On this morning the wind kept the bugs at bay and I was able to go out in short sleeves. Extra layers in the pack of course. Photo by Shiloh Schulte
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Written by Shiloh Schulte for Stephen Brown
“Well you can try the clearance racks, but there is not much call for that item this time of year”. The thermometer outside the L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine stands at 101 degrees and I am trying to buy three sets of thermal underwear. Elaine, the saleswoman, watches me dubiously as I make my way to the back of the men’s clothing department. No luck. Two stores later I finally find what I need at Cabela’s, and my Arctic outfitting is complete. Fast forward five days and I am glad to be wearing the extra layer as I wade into the Arctic Ocean with three other crew members and launch the Zodiac on our way to the Jago River field camp on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
It has been 14 years since my last visit to the Arctic. I was 18 and somehow managed to land a job on a field crew on the Colville River in Northern Alaska studying Lapland Longspurs, Loons, and Shorebirds. I was hooked. A series of field jobs and my graduate work followed, but I never managed to find a way to get back to the tundra. Last year I was prepared to come north as part of Manomet’s team working on the fall shorebird study, but by July I was deeply immersed in Manomet’s assessment of damage to shorebirds as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Jago River crew heads out into the Beaufort Sea. Photo by Vitek Jirinec |
Five minutes out from Kaktovik, our boat motor suddenly loses power and we quickly discover that the cooling system has failed or clogged. A 20 minute trip becomes 60 as we creep along to prevent the engine from overheating. The crew takes the setback in stride and when we finally arrive at camp we get to work quickly. Eddie stays in camp to work on the motor while Heather and Vitek, the other two UAF crew members, and I head out to the mudflats to sample invertebrates.
Invertebrate sampling is cold, muddy work, but the data will tell us how much food is available for shorebirds on the Jago River delta. Photo by Vitek Jirinec. In the photo: Heather Craig |
It is late summer in the Arctic and many shorebirds have left their nesting sites to head north to the extensive coastal mudflats. Here they will “stage” in large flocks, foraging day and night to gain weight for their long southward migration. The fall shorebird study is designed to discover how many shorebirds of each species are using these flats, what they are eating, and how much food is available. To answer these questions we have to act like shorebirds. This means getting down and dirty as we extract a series of mud and water samples from a seemingly endless series of plots on the huge Jago River mudflat. These samples will be analyzed for invertebrate abundance and diversity, which in turn will tell us how much food is available for shorebirds.
The Brooks Range frames the Jago River field camp on a beautiful day in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (photo by Shiloh Schulte)
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Returning to camp hours later we discover that repairing the motor was not possible with the tools we have on site. Eddie has already made some calls with the satellite phone and we should have additional support to fix or replace the motor tomorrow or the day after. No worries. In the meantime this just means more walking when we head out in the morning for the next shorebird survey.
And walk we do! The mudflat at the mouth of the Jago River is over 2 kilometers wide and 5 kilometers long. The survey protocol calls for us to census all shorebirds on the flat every three days. In practice this means criss-crossing the flat systematically from one end to the other. Heather and I set out early in the morning, while Eddie and Vitek prepare for another day of muddy invertebrate samples (rotation decided by scissors-paper-rock). By the end of the day Heather and I have walked for eight hours and spent three hours looking through a scope. Our survey was a success though. A rare day of light wind and clear skies made for ideal bird watching conditions and we counted hundreds of shorebirds, most of which were young Semipalmated Sandpipers. The Semipalmated Sandpiper population has declined sharply in recent years for reasons that are still largely unclear. Disturbance and loss of habitat at migration and winter staging areas may be responsible, but part of the answer might lie here on the Arctic mudflats. These newly fledged sandpipers need to pack on weight quickly before the short summer is over. As the Arctic climate warms, more glacial meltwater is released into the rivers on the North Slope. The influx of fresh water might be enough to shift the available feeding habitat or even change the salinity of the mudflats, which in turn, might affect the invertebrates on which the Semipalmated Sandpipers and other shorebirds rely. Hopefully the abundance of young Semipalmated Sandpipers on our survey is a reflection of a good breeding season. We will not know though until the data are in from the rest of the season, both here on the Jago and from partners conducting surveys all across the Arctic.
Returning to camp footsore and tired we find that Eddie and Vitek finished before us, so dinner is hot and ready! A good end to the day. Did I say end? Not with this crew. After dinner Vitek proposes a polar plunge in a permafrost pond near camp. “Near” is a relative term however, as the closest pond is almost a kilometer away. For some reason we head out anyway and find a suitably deep and freezing pond. No way to do it slowly – in rapid succession we cannonball into the pond and emerge gasping to pull on dry clothes and sprint back to camp.
Sometime in the next couple of days I should be heading out to the Canning River camp to re-join Trevor Lloyd-Evans and Roy Churchwell and begin shorebird trapping. We will band the birds and take blood samples which will be analyzed to see how quickly the birds are gaining weight. I will miss the seemingly inexhaustible energy and high spirits of the Jago River crew, but I am excited to see a new and more remote site and get the trapping underway. I will check back in when I can with a report from the Canning River delta.
Grizzly tracks (left) and Wolf tracks (right) on the flats east of camp. Photos by Vitek Jirinec and Shiloh Schulte
(Written by Trevor Lloyd-Evans) Okpilak river camp, like the two others on the Jago and Canning rivers, looks over a broad mudflat, lagoon and barrier beach system. Here, the rivers from the Brooks Range flow north and meet the Arctic Ocean at the Beaufort Sea in a region of high biological productivity.
Brad Winn
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