Publications

SUMMARY: A comparison is made of different methods of determining size of home range from grid trapping data. Studies of artificial populations show that a boundary strip method of measuring area and an adjusted range length give sizes closer to the true range than do minimum area or observed range length methods. In simulated trapping of artificial populations, the known range size

Population levels of emperor geese (Chen canagica) in Alaska in 1993 were about half that estimated in the 1960s. Survival information is necessary for managers to decide how to best enhance recovery of this species to former levels. We calculated seasonal and annual estimates of emperor goose survival from resightings of neck-collared birds. Geese were neck collared in 1988-90 on their...

Sea ducks (tribe Mergini after Johnsgard 1960) are the most northerly distributed ducks, and species diversity is greatest in the North Pacific. They exploit a diversity of inshore and offshore marine habitats during the non-breeding season, and their use of habitat during breeding varies from coastal through freshwater wetlands of the tundra and taiga (Figure 1, Appendix 1). Non...

On 24 March 1989, the T/V Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound (PWS). eventually releasing 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude oil. The subsequent oil slick extended from PWS southwest along the Kenai Peninsula, past Kodiak Island to the Alaska Peninsula (Galt and Payton 1990). The spill encompassed extensive areas of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) habitat. Estimates of sea...

We review recent accounts of the foraging ecologies of five species of small auklets found in the Bering Sea. These birds eat a wide variety of zooplankton and micronekton. Least Auklets Aethia pusilla and Whiskered Auklets A. pygmaea, as far as is known, primarily eat copepods, whereas Created Auklets A. cristatella appear to specialize on euphausiids, at least during the breeding...

Spectacled eider (Somateria fischeri) populations in western Alaska are now less than 4% of the numbers estimated in the early 1970s. In 1992, an estimated 1721 nesting pairs remained on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Causes of this rapid and continuing decline of -14% per year are undocumented. Many aspects of spectacled eider biology remain unknown, including their marine foraging habitats...

Ornithology in Alaska formally began with the observations of Georg Wilhelm Steller during Vitus Bering's voyage of discovery in 1741. Steller's journal makes brief mention of various seabird species he encountered during his travels in the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands (Frost and Engel 1988). For more than 100 years following Steller, the Russian-American Company was active in...

The Island Mountain deposit, an anomalous massive sulfide in the Central belt of the Franciscan subduction complex, northern California Coast Ranges, formed during hydrothermal activity in a sediment-dominated paleo-sea-floor environment. Although the base of the massive sulfide is juxtaposed against a 500-m-wide melange band, its gradational upper contact within a coherent sequence of...

We report three cases where female Brown Bears (Ursus arctos middendorffi) with new (1 winter season. The adoptions occurred in a sampling of 104 litters produced by 89 different females on Kodiak Island, Alaska during 1982-1990. A maximum of six cubs were reared from litters that probably would have produced 3-4 subadults if the adoptions had not taken place.

Most seabirds breed in colonies on offshore islands, but throughout most of their range from California to Alaska Marbled Murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) fly inland to nest on trees in old-growth coniferous forests. Some fraction of the murrelet population nests on the ground in Alaska. The relative distribution and abundance of murrelets in forested and treeless areas of Alaska is...

We analyze intraspecific mitochondrial DNA variation in chinook salmon from drainages in the Yukon River, the Kenai River, and Oregon and California rivers; and chum salmon from the Yukon River and vancouver Island, and Washington rivers. For each species, three different portions of the mtDNA molecule were amplified seperately using the polymerase chain reaction and then digested with...

Existing knowledge on high-seas and coastal gillnet fisheries known to kill seabirds in the North Pacific is summarized. Recent estimates suggest that high-seas gillnet fisheries may have taken more than 500,000 seabirds in 1990. The majority of birds taken in those fisheries were Sooty Puffinus griseus or Short-tailed P. tenuirostris shearwaters. A recent analysis of impacts of those...