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Member updates

Compiled by the Pacific Seabirds Committee

Lilamarie Bowen

Lilamarie Bowen successfully defended her Master’s thesis in November 2023, titled “Western Gulls’ Reproductive and Behavioral Responses to Human Disturbance.” She was advised by Dan C. Barton within the Cal Poly Humboldt College of Natural Resources, Department of Wildlife. Lila has been a PSG member and PSG HELPS recipient since 2020. She was awarded funding to travel to the 2023 Annual Meeting in San Diego where she volunteered and presented her thesis research.

Corresponding Member Update: Javier Quiñones

Javier’s main research and Ph.D. thesis was focused on jellyfish occurrence and its relationship with environmental variability in Peru but since 2018 his research focus has shifted to the spatial distribution, foraging ecology, and habitat of migratory seabirds, specially albatrosses and petrels, in Peru. Javier has actively participated in research cruises on pelagic seabirds along the entire Peruvian coast as well on 11 campaigns to Antarctica. He is working on surveys attaching satellite transmitters with GPS on Chatham and Buller Albatrosses in offshore southern Peru, sponsored by ACAP. In addition, he is currently collaborating with the Conservation of New Zealand regarding habitat use of Salvin’s and Black Petrels in Peru. Javier has more than 35 indexed scientific publications.

During 2023, Javier worked as the head of the Top Predators department of the Peruvian Marine Research Institute (IMARPE) in Callao, Peru. During 2023, he published 4 papers on Black-browed Albatross and Buller’s Albatross (to access all of Javier’s papers, click here). Javier was also was an ACAP secondee in the Department of Conservation in New Zealand, where he worked on addressing distribution data gaps of Chatham, Buller’s, and Salvin’s Albatrosses, and Black Petrels and their overlap with the artisanal fishing effort of Peruvian longline, drift gillnet, and coastal gillnet fisheries. Javier seeks to learn about  mitigation and fisheries outreach techniques used in New Zealand that can be adapted and applied to the artisanal fisheries of Peru. (WMIL) New Zealand. More recently, Javier served as a representative for the Peruvian Marine Research Institute together with Johannes Fisher and Igor Debski from the Department of Conservation of New Zealand to develop a project for by-catch mitigation of albatrosses and petrels in the Peruvian artisanal longline fishery targeting sharks.In addition, Javier assisted on a Black Petrel (Procellaria parkinsoni) project on the Great Barrier Island nesting area, together with Elizabeth Bell from Wildlife Management International Ltd. Contact Javier at jquinones@imarpe.gob.pe or javierantonioquinones@gmail.com.

Mark Rauzon

Mark Rauzon recently completed a year-long fellowship with Stanford University’s Educational Partnership to Internationalize Curriculum (EPIC) with nine other California community college professors. The goal of the EPIC fellowship is to develop a global curriculum to share. “Breaking Up in the Bering Sea” is about Russia/US/climate chaos and the effect on international politics, Native communities, and Bering Sea ecology. Mark expresses thanks to Liz Labunski of the USFWS for placement on an icebreaker headed to the Chukchi Sea for work on his program, the product of which is a set of four ArcGIS Storymaps: 

History
Energy
Ecology
Psychology

Any comments and collaborations welcome; please email mrauzon@peralta.edu.

PSG Fulbright Members

  • Jacob Ligorria (who presented his undergraduate senior thesis research on Common Tern foraging in the Gulf of Maine at the last PSG meeting) has received a Fulbright grant and a National Geographic award to study dovekies breeding on Spitsbergen with Prof. Wojczulanis-Jakubas at the University of Gdansk! Congratulations!
  • Michelle Kissling, a University of Montana Ph.D. student studying wildlife biology, will soon begin her Fulbright Scholarship to study the Greater Kafue Ecosystem in Zambia. She will develop an analytical framework to estimate wildlife population dynamics and evaluate efficacy of interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, Michelle has completed important research on Marbled Murrelets. Congratulations!