petrel papers

Okay, I here I go. I'm dusting off those petrel manuscripts from 2008 to get them published. Yikes, has it really been that long? 

Figuratively and literally, the field notebooks and binders have sat in my office for too long and collected a lot of dust. Back in 2004-2005, I was so excited to collect the data and work with these amazing birds in Chile. I was the first to see these chicks near fledging, something that I thought would be fun to turn into a children's story one day. Now I need to turn all of that excitement and hard work into something worthwhile and get it out there into the public domain. If not for myself, than at least for the birds. 

 Where does all this new found enthusiasm and motivation come from? Certainly, the recent meeting of PSG helped; great presentations from my peers and colleagues reminded me about my roots in field biology and scientific research. And it was the embarassment I felt during a conversation with a scientist about data sitting on shelves. His quiet opinion about our duty to publish. From a man that has published over 200 papers. The final straw was reading the 2014 Proposed Marbled Murrelet Recovery Strategy this morning, where unpublished data and manuscripts in preparation were being used to supply trends about marbled murrelets in BC. Without this information in the public domain, there was no way for me to validate the statements or trend. Shocking for a species on endangered species lists I thought. Or was it? Cringe. My data. Same sort of thing. Different hemisphere. So, that was it. The tipping point. I'm going to need support as I work away in my home office so thanks for throwing it my way. 90 days. That's my goal for submitting the first paper.

nurdles

Nothing cheers me up more these days than a story about plastic nurdles, raising the awareness of these seemingly inocuous plastic beads. These pre-production plastic pellets are shipped in containers across the oceans to be made into various plastic products for consumers. They can end up in the ocean if a container falls off a ship, and in days past, they were used to help skid the big metal containers into place; this practice is now banned. If you don't believe containers fall off ships, you'll be dumbfounded to learn that as many as 10,000 fall into the ocean every year, lost overboard, never to be picked up.

Nurdles are floating throughout the world's oceans and end up on beaches and shorelines. Last fall, I found them on Yellow Island (photo above), a small island in the San Juan Archipelago, WA. Nurdles look like flying fish eggs so are consumed by surface feeding birds, mammals and fish. Nurdles have been found in the stomach of albatross, shearwaters, turtles and even myctophids, deep sea fishes that come to the surface at night.

The near ubiquitous distribution of plastics in the ocean has been catalogued by scientists and environmentalists. Here in this link to Patagonia's website, 5 Gyres Institute scientists are documenting plastics in the South Atlantic gyre and beaches of Hawaii. And of course, they find nurdles! Check out their pictures.

http://video.patagonia.com/slideshow/Journey-to-the-South-Atlantic-G?sssdmh=dm23.140437&src=082211_ci3

kidney stone

I guess "cool science" is going to have to take a backseat to "painful life" right now. I forgot how painful those little stones were. Yesterday morning was two hours of intense, mind-boggling pain, and me asking myself useful questions like "did they always hurt this much?" and "is this kidney stone # 6 or 7?".

While I was grappling with the answers, I was also asking myself where the hospital was. I could not clearly picture its location even though I've walked past it at least a dozen times. So, I went online, only to find it was a mere 3-4 blocks away. For a few seconds, I considered my options. Should I walk there? The emergency room is just down the street. What if was on the Robinson Crusoe Islands and had to hike down from the seabird colony...I would walk then, right? If I call an ambulance, am I getting soft? All this, and more, flashed through my brain in about 4 nanoseconds before I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. There was no way I was walking three feet let alone three blocks; I would pass out from the pain and be laying out on the street at 6 AM. That would not be an improvement.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (but was only 38 min), the ambulance came. I was in the ER in just a few minutes and got help from the nurse and doctor immediately. They gave me drugs for the pain and CT scan for the stone. Once it was revealed that the stone was a mere 1.5 mm, I was discharged to pass it quietly at home. Which I did. Early this morning. Thank goodness. Has been a very rough few days and am inordinately thankful that I am usually healthy and pain free. I know I'm supposed to drink lots of water and have never been able to do this but now I am seriously going to try. I really don't want kidney stone #8.

the first post

Well, here goes. I'm going to blog about science, conservation, philosophy and meditations on life. I'll post links from cool science articles, follow scientists that are doing really interesting stuff, and talk about conservation that is making a difference and making the news. But I'm also going to write about life and since that's a pretty big category, you'll see all kinds of other stuff too.