Haight et al. (2025)

Author Information

Gavin Haight, Josh Adams, Laney White, and Emma Kelsey: USGS Western Ecological Research Center

David Pereksta: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

Matthew McKown & Abram Fleishman: Conservation Metrics Inc.

Gavin Haight, Josh Adams, Laney White, and Emma Kelsey (USGS Western Ecological Research Center; USGS WERC), in collaboration with David Pereksta (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; BOEM), are working to expand the Motus Wildlife Tracking System in central and southern California with a focus on increasing tracking capacity for seabirds and bats off southern-central California and in the Southern California Bight. To date, 18 new stations have been added to the network. They plan to deploy Motus tags on three species of breeding seabirds in the Channel Islands this spring: Ashy Storm-petrels (Oceanodroma homochroa), Cassin’s Auklets (Ptychoramphus aleuticus), and Western Gulls (Larus occidentalis). The Western Gulls will also carry GPS-GSM tags. https://www.usgs.gov/centers/werc/science/birds-bats-and-beyond-networked-wildlife-tracking-southern-california-bight 

Josh Adams and Laney White (USGS WERC), in collaboration with Matthew McKown and Abram Fleishman (Conservation Metrics Inc.), and with support from David Pereksta (BOEM) are working on manual, low-taxonomic identification of targets detected using a machine learning model in applied to aerial imagery collected off southern-central California between 2018–2021.