Publications

The King Eider (Somateria spectabilis) has been delineated into two broadly distributed breeding populations in North America (the western and eastern Arctic) on the basis of banding data and their use of widely separated Pacific and Atlantic wintering areas. Little is known about the level of gene flow between these two populations. Also unknown is whether behavioral patterns common...

Artificial propagation of aquatic organisms is increasing globally and currently accounts for approximately 32% of total world fishery production (Vannuccini, 2004). Between 1970 and 2000, aquaculture production of salmonids has grown from less than 200,000 metric tons per year to over 1.5 million metric tons (Tacon, 2003). In 1995, the number of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) far...

Grassland birds are declining at a faster rate than any other group of North American bird species. Livestock grazing is the primary economic use of grasslands in the western United States, but the effects of this use on distribution and productivity of grassland birds are unclear. We examined nest density and success of ground-nesting birds on grazed and ungrazed grasslands in western...

Arctic multiyear sea ice concentration maps for January 1988-2001 were generated from SSM/I brightness temperatures (19H, 19V, and 37V) using modified multiple layer perceptron neural networks. Learning data for the neural networks were extracted from ice maps derived from Okean and ERS satellite imagery to capitalize on the stability of active radar multiyear ice signatures. Evaluations...

Estimates of nest success are widely applied in order to evaluate a multitude of theoretical and practical issues. Frequently, however, researchers fail to limit their inferences to the appropriate spatial scale. We evaluated small-scale variation in nest success of Western Sandpipers Calidris mauri during a four-year study on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska. We use these...

We described characteristics of the wintering area used by Spectacled Eiders (Somateria fischeri) in the Bering Sea, Alaska, and evaluated these characteristics in relation to long-term population trends. Remoteness, limited daylight, and extreme weather conditions precluded direct observations, so we derived the location of the wintering area from satellite telemetry, ice conditions...

Dungeness crabs (Cancer magister) were sampled with commercial pots and counted by scuba divers on benthic transects at eight sites near Glacier Bay, Alaska. Catch per unit of effort (CPUE) from pots was compared to the density estimates from dives to evaluate the bias and power of the two techniques. Yearly sampling was conducted in two seasons: April and September, from 1992 to 2000...

Polar bears give birth in snow dens in midwinter and remain in dens until early spring. The survival and development of cubs is dependent on a stable environment within the maternal den. To mitigate potential disruption of polar bear denning by existing and proposed petroleum activities, we used forward-looking infrared (FLIR) viewing to try to detect heat rising from dens.We flew...

The intraspecific relationships between populations of Alaskan Halichondria cf. panicea are the subjects of ongoing research. In this study we compare CO1 sequences of Alaskan Halichondria cf. panicea with North East Atlantic Halichondria panicea and its sister species Halichondria bowerbanki. Alaskan Halichondria cf. panicea form a well-supported sister group to the European...

The greatest promise of radiotelemetry always has been a better understanding of animal movements. Telemetry has helped us know when animals are active, how active they are, how far and how fast they move, the geographic areas they occupy, and whether individuals vary in these traits. Unfortunately, the inability to estimate the error in animals utilization distributions (UDs), has...

Apparent threats to the spatial distribution of seagrass in San Quintín Bay prompted us to make a detailed assessment of habitats in the bay. Six coastal habitats and three seagrass subclasses were delineated using airborne digital multispectral videography (DMSV). Eelgrass, Zostera marina, was the predominant seagrass and covered 40% (1949 ha) of the areal extent of the bay in 1999...

No abstract available.