Vallery et al. (2025)

Beth Flint, Anna Vallery, and Meagan Selvig (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Marine National Monuments of the Pacific Biology Team) visited Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge of Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument in August, 2024. This was the first trip to Jarvis Island by USFWS in over six years. The team conducted rapid ecological assessments, documented burrow-nesting bird distribution and occupancy, redeployed remote monitoring tools and established a satellite-enabled camera system. Observations suggest the nesting population of burrow-nesting seabirds, particularly Tropical Shearwaters (Puffinus bailloni), and ground-nesting seabirds are increasing. Population estimates for the other breeding seabirds on island, including Sooty Tern (Onychoprion fuscatus), Lesser Frigatebird (Fregata ariel), Blue-Gray Noddy (Procelsterna cerulea), Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra), and others were also made. Reports are forthcoming. 

Anna Vallery, Daniel Link (USFWS Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument), and Jon Plissner (USFWS Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge), with support from the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument team, initiated a project to develop Laysan (Phoebastria immutabilis) and Black-footed Albatross (Phoebastria nigripes) monitoring protocols using drones and machine learning tools on Midway in December of 2024. This project is slated to be a three-year project, with the goal of developing workflows and automated detection tools for digitizing drone imagery of large seabird colonies, both at Midway and throughout the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.