Alright i think we have made it officially um my name is Sheridan Alford with the Black AF in STEM
as well as we have our good friend Chelsea here as well um and we're going to work with
NOAA Sanctuaries today to name some Shearwaters uh so Chelsea would you I would love for you to
give your introduction um just some things that you do and things that you get into.
Hi i'm Chelsea Connor I am a birder um and a herpetologist I study in NOLS um I am
starting my PhD this fall at Clemson University and uh I'm from the Commonwealth of Dominica so
like most of my birding experience is in the Caribbean so I'm still learning a lot of these
North American birds but um I'm really excited to get to name these shearwaters with Sheridan today
yes thank you thank you um and so we also have a special guest from NOAA Sanctuaries here um Mr
David Wiley um or Wilson he's gonna give us some background on the birds that we're naming
let us know about the research that's going on um so yeah welcome David. Yeah thanks for
having me yeah this is going to be kind of a fun opportunity to introduce your people to
birds they don't usually see because great shearwaters are way offshore
so most people never see them so this would be kind of fun. Yes I'm excited um so the NOAA
National Marine Sanctuaries um is the official office um but where are the birds coming from?
Well our birds are in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary do you want me to
show some pictures would that be easier or? We love pictures. Okay let's see if I can
share my screen this is always a challenge right? Right I believe in you we got this.
Let's see.
Not there yet.
There we go wonderful. How's that looking? Boom perfect, seamless! Right
like we know what we're doing. Right so these are the birds these pictures that you're seeing
down here are the birds and we're working in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary I've
just got a bunch of names up here of different people on the project because science these days
is not a one-person deal by any means it takes lots and lots of people with lots and lots of
different expertise but let me tell you first a little bit about the the national marine sanctuary
program in general so we're part of a Office of National Marine Sanctuaries that has at
least 14 National Marine Sanctuaries around the country and you can kind of think of these as
the coolest places in the ocean and the red star up here in the uh the northeast part
of the United States is where I work the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
So this is where we're working with the shearwaters it's just off the coast of
Massachusetts it's not huge maybe you know like a little over 600 square nautical miles but it's in
a really really cool productive place with lots of whales and sea birds and I actually started
as mostly being a whale biologist but because whales and birds are eating the lots of times the
same things they're found in the same spot um I started becoming more and more interested in birds
so these are all shearwaters that you're seeing flying around this whale there's two different
types here great shearwaters which are the ones we're going to talk about mostly are these kind of
um guys that are right in here multi-colored and then these are sooty shearwaters that are all just
kind of one uniform dark color and what's cool about them is that they are open ocean birds they
go to land only to nest the rest of their lives they're spending entirely at sea and one of the
ways they can do this is they have these tubes on their nose so they can actually drink salt
water and then they excrete the excess salt right through the through those tubes you know if we
tried to drink salt water we'd all die of thirst so this is how these animals can stay at sea um
and drink water without dying of thirst so it's kind of a neat little adaptation
that land birds don't have to worry about because they just go to a freshwater site and and drink.
Now what's really cool about these birds is that they live in two different hemisphere they're
really birds of endless summer so they spend our summer time up here in the northern hemisphere in
the North Atlantic and then during our winter they go down here and spend the summer again
down in the South Atlantic and that's where they breed and they breed in some of the most remote
places on the entire planet there's like maybe six million great shearwaters maybe ten and they all
breed on these couple of islands that are between the tip of South America and the tip of South
Africa they're called the Tristan Islands right in here um and they actually breed in burrows they
don't make nests the way we think of them but they dig holes and they nest in burrows and they have
one egg um that they lay that's it just one and they probably don't do that until they're like six
or seven years old um and they might live we don't really know maybe you know 25 to 40 years some
people have guessed so long live birds uh just one egg so one offspring every couple of years maybe
and they dive they dive into the water but not very deep uh maybe five or six feet usually
so they're eating stuff that's really at the top of the uh of the surface of the water so
how are we going to learn about these seabirds uh that don't come to land
uh particularly not in our hemisphere um and you know even when they are on land they're in holes
in the ground where they're really hard to get so what we do is we put satellite tags on them this
is a satellite tag that you're seeing right here that we're attaching to the back of this seabird.
And it's it's a small tag it only weighs 12 grams a penny is about a gram
so you know you think about 12 of these pennies uh you know lined up on the back of the bird so
not terribly heavy um 12 cents is not exactly what they cost each one of these tags costs
about three thousand dollars so it's a bit of investment to to put these tags on these birds
but it's really important because it tells us what they are and where they're going.
There's this little solar panel um so they're actually able to recharge themselves uh so anytime
the uh light is shining on that solar panel the battery um in that tag is actually replenishing
its power supply and that's how we can keep these tags on for for many many months in many cases
and what it does that tag talks to a satellite
so it's a transmitter that pings out a frequency and that frequency is picked up
by satellites and then using some really cool doppler math it tells you where your bird is
um on the surface of the planet um anywhere between within a hundred meters of where it is to
maybe uh you know a couple kilometers a mile and a half or so so really good spatial um
positioning that you get from these tags that tell you where the birds are in any any point in time.
So first of all of course we have to catch the birds to put the tags on
so what we do is we use bait to get them close to the boat and then use these long-handled nets and
grab them and then once we catch them we put them in these little uh basically they're cat
carriers you guys probably a lot of you have cats so we put them in these cat carriers that
we've specially designed so that they are pretty comfortable and they're surprisingly
um calm when they get in there we also line the bottom of that cage with aluminum foil so when
they poop we can actually collect that material and look at the dna that's contained in their poop
to um you know to figure out what they're eating so that's part of the project
so once we catch them we bring them back to our boat the first thing we have to do is weigh them
uh because there's kind of a formula that we use that
your tag should not be more than way more than three percent of the body weight of the bird
so the first thing we do is weigh them and record that weight so if they're um well actually that
could we could actually put tags on birds that are as light as 400 or 450 grams but we really
we're pretty conservative so we don't tag anything that's less than 600 or 700 grams um but then we
create a huge data sheet um that collects all sorts of data and records all sorts of data.
Of course the whole whole name of the game for science is collecting data and and organizing
a way that makes sense so here we are again putting these tags on the backs of these birds.
Then we also take other samples uh in addition to putting the tags on
um we put little um um we have them breathe into tubes and with these bags in and that
gives us exhaled gas that we can use to look at a stable isotopes and what they've been eating so we
also then take blood samples to figure out what they've been eating that'll also give us their
gender so we know what the sex of these animals are after we've tagged them um you can't figure
out if they're males or females just by looking at them so we really have to do it genetically
and then with feathers we can look at contaminants and also food so we take all
sorts of information about these animals and once we do that um then we get ready and let them go.
So we put them back into the water and then they fly away.
They actually aren't quite as docile as i've made it out to be uh here's pictures
of all of us getting bit very various times Lance is getting chomped on by a bird here
Peter's got his arm being grabbed um this this is uh the person that's really in charge of doing the
satellite tagging for us Linda Welch uh getting bitten this is my arm after I've been pretty
well pounced on by by one of these birds so um although they're they're really fun to work with
um they also do not uh they're pretty feisty I have to say maybe that's the best way to put it.
So once you do that you release them out and you can call up all this information on your computer
so this is my computer and all these red lines are where birds have been flying around
so I can just call up on any particular day on my computer and see not only where my
bird is on that day um or how many birds you know we usually tag between 10 and 15 birds
so they're all flying around and I can just take my computer and call it up and
see where they are and where they've been so it's a very fun way to do research.
So here you're looking at a bunch of years of our data that's animated so all these colored lines
that you're seeing are different individual birds in different years so you can see they're doing
a lot of flying around this is the Gulf of Maine this is the Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary right here
so the animals are moving around a great deal but when we take a look at all of this information
and we add it all together then we can use some mathematics again and computer programming to
figure out where they're spending most of their time so in this particular figure the red areas
are going to be the highest use areas for the birds then the low use areas are going to be green
medium or yellow and of course the white areas are areas that they're not traveling into at all
so this is great for management because for instance if people are looking to
put in wind turbines or doing any sort of offshore energy development or anything uh sand mining or
something like that we can then know where they're going to put these development places and know if
it's going to be in a high use area for seabirds in this place or in this case great shearwaters
to know how much it might impact them so you know all of our research is really conservation biology
so we find out really interesting things about the birds but then the whole idea of course is
is to help the conservation of them um so for instance commercial fisheries will know what
they're overlapping with commercial fisheries and where they might be being caught in nets
shearwaters are are caught quite often in fishing nets accidentally by the fishermen
so this gives us an idea of where the birds are and when they're there
so we can make better management decisions. And then one of the interesting parts of it
is also as i was saying in the beginning um they actually fly from here down to the
tip of South America uh they migrate a distance around 17,000 miles 10,000 miles 17,000 kilometers
um and they do it in you know 25 to 30 days and then they um you know stay down there and they'll
spend the winter down there and then come back here up to our area for the next year.
And this is the path they take these are our birds and they're taking the same path
every year which is really interesting um again maybe 10,000 miles 28 to 35 days
tracking distance but what's interesting to me is that this panel here you're seeing is wind
so of course they're in the open ocean there's no landmarks for them and the wind is always pushing
them in particular directions uh but you can see they're still flying a straight line so there
actually our data will show that this animal for instance would have been heading in this direction
and moving in that direction to compensate for it being pushed off course constantly by the wind
so this really means that it's got some sort of a map so again wind pushing it in particular
directions but the birds are staying on course which means there's flying in a different heading
um but staying on course which means they have a map that we really don't understand right now.
So here's two different great shear waters that are migrating at different times but following
really a very very similar route so again this indicates to us that they have a map that they're
following we just don't know what that map is. That's your kind of quick introduction to great
shearwaters uh the birds that we're going to be naming they're one of my favorite birds
um these are some of the ways that you can be tracking them with us over time and I think
people will be giving you more information about that um twitter is @trackseabirds
so that's pretty much your intro to great shear waters if you have any questions that would
be cool happy to answer them as I mentioned these are somewhat expensive tags and being
on the water also costs you a fair amount of money so these are all the places that uh
provide us funding uh to try to support this research so I will now minimize my screen
back to non-sharing let's see we'll do this. Sheridan: Thank you so much David,
the fact that like you said the wind is blowing them all over the place the fact that the wind
is blowing them all over the place they don't have a map there are no landmarks
it's really baffling how they actually find their way back and forth over the ocean. David: So yeah
they they do it with no landmarks it's crazy and that's one of our goals as scientists is to figure
out just how the heck do they do that. Right you know I mean Chelsea is working on her NOLS and you
know they have some pretty crazy ways of of moving around and figuring out where they are isn't isn't
that true Chelsea I remember reading something about them in the past that they're pretty crazy
animals too. Chelsea: yeah adults have um a lot going on in terms of you know figuring out where
they are um how they like partition themselves on trees uh so they can all like live together
regardless of species um as well as like they look up for different dolap colors and sizes
um they're all really interesting animals and um thank you so much for teaching us about
shearwaters I did not know some of those things I definitely didn't know about the tube nose.
They are fun but all animals are similar it's similarly interesting and fun
so that's why this is such a great career path right. Sheridan: exactly all right well with
that wonderful presentation we're going to jump into these names um so all week we had
people use the hashtag NameThatShearwater um and just give us some options on what to name these
14 um research birds and yeah we're going to go through the list there's some fun ones there's
some really you know influential ones so first on the list we will start with we have Naomi
um and Naomi can be Campbell it could be Naomi Osaka but either way beautiful pleasant gentle
um yeah i think that's going to be like the best looking shearwater that they may catch for sure
for sure um the next name is Shearlock Holmes um i love a good pun if you follow me on twitter
you know that you know that very well um so after Sherlock Holmes and hopefully they'll be
able to help solve some mysteries as you know to their migration and the ecosystem. Sheridan: yes
see look at these ties okay um next we have Bessie so Bessie would be named after Bessie Coleman
and she was the first African-American woman and the first Native American woman to hold a pilot's
license so as these birds are navigating their way across the ocean and essentially teaching us
more than we know about flight at this point yeah hopefully bessie can lead us lead us to
victory Chelsea: yeah and um she also did air shows so um looks like we have like a high flyer.
Next is Ashanti uh named after Ashanti Johnson who's one of the first Black
chemical oceanographers um in 2010 she won a presidential award for excellence in science,
math, and engineering and she works on diversity focused initiatives like in academia which is
super important um it's part of why we started Black AF in STEM
and why we started Black Birders Week correct. Sheridan: yes
of course the diversity is everything and the inclusion is everything um okay i'm glad we
won in this order because i was a big voucher for Bonstance one I just think the name is hilarious
um but the backstory that I heard on Bonstance no it doesn't have any like actual significance um
but people have the name Connie c-o-n-n-i-e and they say that's the shortened version of Constance
and so someone made the joke well what is the short version or the long version of Bonnie
it's Bonstance so i just think it's fun I think it's hilarious um you know suggested meanings a
social person um great companion graceful nickname could be Bonnie um so yeah i love it i love it
yeah. Chelsea: and i'm also happy that we went in um this order because now I get to talk about the
next name Arliner Arliner Young um who I have done like several projects on I think my uh professors
at MSU um when I went there were tired of hearing about her she's the first African-American woman
to receive a PhD in zoology um she worked on radiation with sea urchins structures
that control salt concentration in paramecium and hydration and dehydration of living cells um she
her eyes were damaged by the uv rays from her work um but she made a lot of important contributions
um she also worked with our next name choice coming up here um. Sheridan: yes for that one
um so Ernest Everett Just but in the name of keeping it gender fluid we will do E.E. Just
but this name is named after a marine biologist and he was the pioneer in studies of embryonic
development and fertilization and he also did sea urchins and sand dollars with this research um
and so he does have links to the marine biology labs and he also is the founder of omega sci-fi
at Howard University if you're into fraternities so EE Just was out here really just founding
everything at this point so we thought that would be a great name as. Chelsea: well uh our next name
is Dioum after Baba Dioum who is a Senegalese forestry engineer a quote from uh from him is
in the end we will conserve only what we love we will love only what we understand and we will
understand only what we are taught so I think this is a great name to pick for shearwater who
know that we're hoping to learn a lot from um and gain an understanding and once we have that that
education understanding it's a lot easier to put more effort and get more people interested
in conservation and um learning even more about different species. Sheridan: yes and it's kind of
like a a phrase for environmentalists to live by I think so awesome next we have Tuskegee um many
many naming factors here um during World War II some of the Tuskegee airmen were the first
African-American fighter pilots um for the U.S. Army Air Corps and they trained over the Great
Lakes and there was six Tuskegee airmen in their aircrafts um we're lost on those lakes and of
course are commemorated now further heroism as well as we have Tuskegee um University.
So recently there's a little bit of backstory here as well um so recently archaeologists have
been working um kind of to find these aircrafts they haven't been found this entire time um to
honor the pilot that you know put their lives on the line and the first African Americans to put
um be pilots for the air corps so one lost Tuskegee airman Lieutenant Frank Moody
um he was killed in his Bell P-39Q Airacobra I say Airacobra I'm hoping I pronounced that right
um but it crashed in Lake Huron in 1944 um so the archaeologist Wayne Lusardi um and partners from
the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and part of NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research
um are the ones that are currently working to excavate and find these aircrafts um so
great name for a shearwater as we're working with the
offices. Chelsea: yeah it's a really important part of history so I hope that um they'll be
able to find as as much as possible so we can properly honor them for their contributions
the next name is a really fun one I think it's my second favorite maybe Britney Shears
um iconic that's all i have to say. Sheridan: that's all you need to say you know Britney spears
okay Britney Shears I will definitely be following Britney Shears and Bonstance once we get through
the list we should go through who we're gonna we're gonna pay attention to oh yeah definitely
all right next we have Jemison Mae Carol Jemison is an American engineer physician and former
NASA astronaut um she was the first Black woman to travel into space of course and she served
as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour so Mae Jemison Mae Carol Jemison another
pioneer another African-American just paving the way for a lot of astronauts um physicists
out here so yeah Black in astro is coming up soon so. Chelsea: yeah look out for Black on astro
um next we have another fun one um i'm getting all the fun ones Birdy McBirdFace shout out to Boaty
McBoatface yes Sheridan: because why not why not I support Birdy McBirdFace um next we have Shearly
Temple Shearly Temple I have to like make sure you know y'all get your puns um after Shirley Temple
and you know it's funny a fun fact Shirley Temple is actually like one of my favorite drinks um
so perfect I love it. Chelsea: yeah and then the last name is Shuri or Shear-i however you want
to pronounce it but um it is inspired by Shuri who is um the sister to the Black Panther and um
depending on what storyline you're following she became Black Panther for some time herself um.
Right and um she is she's a Marvel herself get it because yes anyway that's a bad
joke. Sheridan: but no such thing as bad jokes somebody laugh. Chelsea: Shuri Shuri is amazing
and um I hope that the shearwater named after Shuri is going to be just as amazing and clever
so um it has a lot to live up to but i'm sure it can do it. Sheridan: yes um and that that
concludes the actual list now like I said the ones that I am going to be following
we will tell you how to best follow these birds um I know Bonstance has my heart i'm definitely
I think EE Just also is going to be doing some great things out here um and a third one
I might think Dioum like I really feel like Dioum has a great name to live up to and
they're gonna show us good stuff what are your top three? Chelsea: um number one is Alriner obviously
um I feel like Arliner is going to be the best and longest lived uh
shearwater out there um gonna contribute a lot to research I'm already very proud of Arliner
um I think number two I'm gonna have to go with the Britney Shears um that's gonna be an iconic
bird just the range okay the range and then my last one this is a tough choice I don't know how
you chose that these names are good they're very good names okay i'm gonna have to go with Naomi.
fair oh both Naomi's. Sheridan: both icons right you know I might have to
name my daughter Naomi just because like clearly clearly clearly greatness comes from this name
after like talking about it right and the great shearwater named after Naomi
will also bring us greatness um so ways that you you all can follow up with these birds
um go to the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary website um it will be in the links and
the info is on a homepage will direct you to the internal page um so you all can go straight there
um and it will be updated on a regular basis maybe every two weeks or so um so that way you can check
in and Chelsea and I will be tweeting about our birds that we want to follow. Chelsea: yeah
we're definitely gonna keep up with them um and occasionally we may do some like update tweets
from the BAFiS twitter account uh look out for that because we are genuinely really excited
to follow all of these birds um you can also get updates on the twitter account um we will drop the
link for that as well the twitter and the facebook page um and additional info on the twitter account
@trackseabirds yeah and with that what is yours what are your tags you gotta follow Chelsea
at oh yeah follow me on twitter @chelseaherpss um instagram is @outtochelsea and um
you can check out my amazing artwork and uh yes Chelseaherps on redbubble.com um I draw
anoles and sometimes I draw other animals as well. Sheridan: I say get her stickers I have them on
all my things uh laptop water bottle my popsicles I love the popsicle ones but anyway um my name is
Sheridan Alford follow me on all socials @beanie b-e-a-n-i-e jean j-e-a-n underscore on everything
so beanie jean and underscore um and yeah we'll keep it up and don't forget to also follow
um NOAA n-o-a-a um especially the Stellwagen Bank um National Marine Sanctuary and as well as
the twitter um @sanctuaries um for the marine sanctuaries and there you go
I think that's it do we have any questions we'll answer any questions um in the chat as well
so thank you guys for joining us David thank you for your amazing presentation
Chelsea thank you for joining me David: and and thank you for naming these birds it makes it
way more fun for us and you know calling them by numbers isn't very interesting
so yeah much more fun and uh thank you for doing this with us it's been a blast. Chelsea:
yeah thank you so much for having us and we'll keep up all right bye everybody bye.