House begins to fill up

For the last month, the research station has been relatively quiet with the museum and gift shop open. This week we have had five people arrive and begin work on various projects. On July 15 zooplankton samples were collected from the Grand Manan Basin with bongo nets, a pair of nets towed from our research vessel, Phocoena, attached side-by-side resembling bongo drums. Three right whales were seen on this trip but were not relocated later in the day.

Much of the work this week is sorting and organizing equipment. Tonight (July 18) two people will be going to Kent Island and the Bowdoin Scientific Station, to see if a project analyzing food brought back to chicks by Leach's storm petrels is viable. Leach's storm petrels are small seabirds that nest in burrows and feed on zooplankton and marine oils on the ocean surface. The goal of the project is to analyze what the petrels are eating and assess any toxins present in the food.