Underway in the Arctic!

I am now in the small town of Kaktovik, right on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.  Working in the arctic is always challenging!  We started the field season with some significant setbacks due to weather and equipment, but are now underway.  The Jago River Delta camp, where Roy Churchwell from University of Alaska is leading a major effort to figure out what shorebirds are eating, is up and running and collecting data. 

Heading out to the Jago River Delta with the crew that will be working on shorebird surveys and invertebrate sampling there this season.

Trevor Lloyd Evans from Manomet, as well as two other partners Manomet sponsored to come to the Arctic, Brad Winn from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and Ellen Jedrey of Massachusetts Audubon, are also assisting with this effort, as well as conducting our coastal shorebird survey transects at the Jago.  I spent two days working with them at the Jago, and am now briefly back in Kaktovik, where we are working on engine repair, and getting ready to launch the first trip on the coastal survey.  Our new plan is that I will fly there today with a small US Fish and Wildlife Service bush plane, meet up with the two Fish and Wildlife Service staff who will be working the coastal survey, and we will start from the Canning delta and then work east.  We hope to complete the western side of the coastal plain in the next week or so, and then will rendezvous with our colleagues at the Jago before heading to the east along the Canadian border.  But nothing is ever certain in the arctic, so we will revise our plans as we go to handle uncertainties from weather and equipment, and work hard to find the shorebirds along the coast!  I will post my next update by satellite phone from the Canning River Delta.