Science, Technology and Engineering

School of Life Sciences

Department of Environmental Management & Ecology

La Trobe ecology students assist with bird research on remote Bass Strait island.

Media release October 2007

A small group of La Trobe science students have been given an excellent opportunity to gain first-hand experience of field work in seabird ecology. The students will be assisting PhD student, Mark Carey, with his research project on small and remote Great Dog Island, located within the Furneaux Group in Bass Strait.

Mark, a postgraduate student in Environmental Management and Ecology at the Albury Wodonga campus, is undertaking research on the Short-tailed Shearwater (Puffinus tenuirostris) and what human interactions affect the breeding success of these long-lived seabirds. Mark travels annually to the Island from mid-November until the end of January, spending Xmas within the breeding colony on the south coast of the Island.

The five accompanying students will travel to the island in overlapping three week blocks during the ten week field trip period. They will assist Mark in a variety of areas, including capturing adult birds, measuring eggs and recording data.

“I am sure that this will be an eye-opening experience for the students. They will certainly experience a unique environment and will also have to work hard sometimes, as the practical side of the research can be quite demanding,” said Mark.

The students will also be assisting with a unique bird tracking project that Mark has recently obtained collaborative funding for. Using the British Antarctic Survey developed “loggers” (geo-location devices with miniaturised data storage), this project will investigate the at-sea behaviour and distribution of the short-tailed shearwater.

“This technique will help identify likely detrimental fisheries interactions at their breeding grounds in Bass Strait, Tasmania and important staging areas on their migration route within the Pacific Basin. Foraging range and behaviour will be compared between sexes, and between successful and unsuccessful pairs. This research will provide definitive proof of the location of migratory pathways and the at-sea behaviour of the short-tailed shearwater. This will be the first comprehensive tracking of this species over the entire annual cycle, and since short-tailed shearwaters operate at a global scale, this new information may serve as an important indicator of climate change and the state of oceanic ecosystems,” stated Mark.

The tiny logging devices, weighing only 1.8 grams and having a five year battery life, will be attached to 30 birds in November, on pairs and individual males and females. Twelve months later they will be recaptured and the “loggers” recovered, with an expected recapture rate of sixty per cent.

These “on-board computers” measure geo-location via level of light versus time of day and also record “wet” activity through depth-diving pressure sensors. They will track the shearwater’s movements in their feeding grounds up until April and then their migratory behaviour in different areas they move to, including Japan, Alaska and California.

“The British Antarctic Survey group has used this technology for similar recent studies on other migratory birds such as albatrosses, but this is the first time it has been used to track short-tailed shearwaters. I am very grateful for the funding grants provided by an ANZ Holsworth Wildlife Research Grant and the Environmental Management and Ecology Department here at the Albury-Wodonga campus,” said Mark.

For further information, please contact Mark Carey on (02) 6024 9882.

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