The Cooperative - Our goal is to conserve marine birds through coordinated partnerships and actions to reduce threats and further our understanding of these unique species.

AMBC – Roseate Tern Recovery Group Virtual Meeting 2025

Day 1 – Tuesday March 3: Atlantic Marine Bird Cooperative Session

DAY 1 AMBC General Session

All times Eastern

8:30 AM Introductions, Logistics, Meeting Objectives (Caleb Spiegel)

(Type names/affiliations in chat, briefly go over Teams and Teams breakout rooms)

8:45 AM AMBC Overview & Website (Caleb)

8:00 AM AMBC Organization & Development (Caleb)

  • Steering Committee – New members and opportunities (10 min)
  • AMBC Priority Species List – a work in progress (15 min)
  • 2025 Partner Project Summaries & 2026 In-person Meeting Option (5 min)
  • Other Business (5 min)

9:35 AM 2002 North American Waterbird Conservation Plan Revision: progress to date and call for AMBC engagement (Ruth Boettcher and Sara Schweitzer)

10:05 AM Recap of Seabird Bycatch Reduction Workshop (Feb 11-12) (Caleb)

RECORDING 01

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10:15 AM – BREAK (15 minutes) 

10:30 AM World Seabird Union Update (Juliet Lamb) (15 min)

10:45 AM Working Group Updates; Review of Team objectives & Full group input; Breakout Meeting Goals (~20 minutes/each)

  • Marine Spatial Planning
  • Community Science & Marine Bird Health
  • Forage Fish + Seabird Colonies & Adjacent Waters (SCAW)

RECORDING 02

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12:45 PM Working Group Break Out Meetings (Session 1) – Two concurrent breakouts, 90 minutes

Marine Spatial Planning

  • Presentations on ongoing offshore wind activities
    • Vulnerability Assessment and Power Analysis project (Evan Adams)
    • RWSC Marine Bird Distribution Working Group + Q&A (Julia Gulka)
    • SCRAM – Northern Gannet Integrated Model (Michael Wethington)
    • Prioritization framework for seabird research & mitigation (Aspen Ellis)
  • Future WG planning – name and scope (Holly facilitates)
  • Next steps for WG

Community Science & Marine Bird Health

  • Brief review of ongoing & on-hold WG initiatives
  • Discuss new Initiative on Unusual Tern Mortality: clarify objectives for analyzing past mortality & how the WG could support operational needs; identify interested participants/leads
  • Opportunity to indicate interest in leading or supporting new or existing initiatives

RECORDING  03

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2:30 PM Working Group Break Out Meetings (Session 2) – Single breakout, 90 minutes

Forage Fish + SCAW, combined

    • Tackling regulatory hurdles surrounding the restoration/creation of waterbird nesting islands (Ruth Boettcher)
    • Updates on Forage Fish Management in the Northeast US (Michelle Staudinger)
    • Seabirds for Stock Assessment: Developing an Atlantic herring recruitment index from common tern food habits data in the Gulf of Maine (Sean Hardison)
    • Update on Project Poop and plans for 2026 (Gemma Clucas)

4:00 PM Working Group Report Outs & Discussion – 10 min / working group

  • Marine Spatial Planning
  • Community Science & Marine Bird Health
  • Forage Fish + Seabird Colonies & Adjacent Waters (SCAW)

4:30 PM – END

RECORDING 04

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Day 2 – March 4: General Presentations – AMBC & Roseate Tern

8:30 AM Housekeeping – (Caleb & Alison, 10 minutes) (Type in names, affiliations, briefly go over Teams)

8:40 AM Forage Ecology, Diet & Prey/Colonial Waterbird Management & Monitoring, Michelle Staudinger session lead

8:40-8:55A     Michelle Staudinger – Testing the utility of a new protocol for collecting dropped prey for seabird diet studies

8:55-9:10        Gemma Clucas – An update from Project Poop: Black Skimmer chick diets along the Atlantic Coast as revealed by fecal DNA metabarcoding

9:10-9:25        Kimberly Lato – Evaluating the impacts of climate-mediated shifts in prey quality on common tern bioenergetics and productivity

9:25-9:40        Katie Ryder -Assessing gull interactions to inform predator management on Country Island, Nova Scotia

9:40-9:55          Kate Vonderbank – Energy Density of Capelin (Mallotus villosus) and Sand lance (Ammodytes americanus, A. dubius) during the Summer in Coastal Newfoundland

9:55-10:10      Heather Major – 31 years of seabird monitoring at Machias Seal Island 10:10-10:25    Section Q&A + Discussion

RECORDING 05

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10:35 AM Marine Debris, Contaminants, and Oil & Gas Platforms, Christina Petalas session lead

10:35-10:50A Christina Petalas – Herring gulls as sentinels of plastic debris and plastic-associated contaminants in the St. Lawrence

10:50-11:05    Erin Murphy – Advances in macroplastic risk assessments for seabirds

11:05-11:20    Anaïs Kerric – Aquatic bird eggs from the St. Lawrence River (Qc, Canada) as indicators of spatial and temporal variations in PFAS

11:20-11:35    Pauline Bellot – Agricultural fields: food-rich habitats or poisoned traps for marine birds?

11:35-11:50    Patrick Jodice – Do non-breeding Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) alter their movement patterns in response to the presence of offshore structures?

11:50-12:00    Section Q&A + Discussion

RECORDING 06

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12:50 PM Multi-Topic: Community Science, Bycatch, At-Sea Surveys, Griffin Archambault session lead

12:50-1:05P    Griffin Archimbault – The NY Annual Loon Census: Knowns, Unknowns, and What We Hope to Learn

1:05-1:20        Robert Blackmore – Reducing Risk of Seabird Bycatch – Inshore Newfoundland Fisheries

1:20-1:35        Emily Shumchenia & Sarah DeLand – Northwest Atlantic Seabird Catalog integration into OBIS-SEAMAP

1:35-1:50        Pamela Michael – Flight heights and attraction to man-made structures by marine birds in the Gulf of America

1:50-2:00        Section Q&A + Discussion

2:00 PM Offshore Energy Science & Management. Stephanie Avery-Gomm session lead

2:00-2:15P        Stephanie Avery-Gomm – Assessing the Cumulative Effects of Pressures from Offshore Wind Energy Development and Other Sources on Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) in Atlantic Canada

2:15-2:30        Greg Forcey – Big Brother Is Watching You: Using Automatic Multi-Sensor Arrays to Monitor Seabirds on Offshore Installations

2:30-2:45        Michaela Peterson – A Quantitative Assessment of Risk to Seabirds and Migratory Landbirds from Energy Development in the Gulf

2:45-3:00        Julia Gulka – Assessing movement patterns and habitat use of non-breeding northern gannets (Morus bassanus) in the U.S. Atlantic in relation to environmental conditions and offshore wind development

3:00-3:15        Juliet Lamb – Concurrent tracking of multiple seabird species to inform offshore wind energy development in the New York Bight (USA)

3:15-3:25        Section Q&A + Discussion

RECORDING 07

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3:35 PM Tracking Studies, Part 1, Evan Adams session lead

3:35-3:50P      Evan Adams – Assessing measurement bias in flight height estimates from animal tracking devices

3:50-4:05        Kate Goodenough – Uncovering the hemispheric footprint of the Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus): A combined study of GPS telemetry tracking and mark-recapture efforts in North Carolina

4:05-4:20        Abigail Muscat – Location and timing of Razorbill (Alca torda) energetic bottlenecks in the Northwest Atlantic

4:20-4:35        Sydney Collins – Leach’s Storm-Petrels exhibit individually consistent foraging space use throughout the breeding season

4:35-4:50        Section Q&A + Discussion

4:50 PM – END (Tracking Studies, Part 2 to commence on DAY 2 following lunch at 1:30 PM)

RECORDING 08

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Day 3 – March 5: General Presentations – Roseate Tern Meeting & Talks

8:30 AM Housekeeping – (Caleb, Alison, Suzanne, 10 minutes) (Type in names, affiliations, briefly go over Teams)

8:40 AM Roseate Tern Colony Updates

Europe/Florida/Caribbean

Ireland (Steve Newton & Brian Burke)

UK (Rebekah Goodwill)

Florida (Ricardo Zambrano)

US Virgin Islands offshore Cays (Victoria Beasley)

Northwest Atlantic

All Colony Update (Kate O’Brien, 15 min)

Atlantic Canada: North Brother Island, Nova Scotia, & smaller peripheral colonies: Gull, Sable, Chenel, Paquet (Julie McKnight & Shawn Craik)

Atlantic Canada: Country Island & North Brother (Sarah Neima) Maine Coastal Islands (Paula Shannon)

New Hampshire (Liz Craig) Buzzards Bay, MA (Sarah Guitart) Monomoy, MA (Eileen McGourty)

Connecticut, Falkner Island (Kris Vagos) New York, GGI (Margaret Rubega)

RECORDING 09

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10:20 AM Roseate Tern Colony Talks, Sarah Guitart session lead

10:20-10:35A Cindy Barreto – Whose nest is this, again? An update on how Roseate and Common tern eggs are not reliably distinguished by egg morphology

10:35-10:50    Sarah Guitart – Impact of Roseate Tern Nestboxes on Occupancy and Productivity on Bird and Ram Islands OR Updates on occupancy and productivity of Roseate Terns in different nestbox styles and arrangements

10:50-11:00    Section Q&A + Discussion

11:00 AM Roseate Tern Recovery & Data Sharing

11:00-11:15A Kate O’Brien & Jessica Espinosa – Update on Roseate Tern Species Status Assessment

11:15-11:45    Q&A and Roseate Tern Recovery Discussion

11:45-12:00P Kayla Davis – Roseate Tern Population Viability Analysis

12:00-12:15    Jennifer McKay – Data Sharing and the USGS Bird Banding Lab

12:15-12:30      Q&A and Open Discussion about Data Sharing and Management

RECORDING 10

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1:30 PM Tracking Studies, Part 2 – Roseate Tern Focus, Keenan Yakola session lead

1:30-1:45P      Rafael Ângelo Revorêdo – GPS Tracking of Roseate Tern Migration from Galinhos, Brazil, in 2025

1:45-2:00        Keenan Yakola – Bayesian-enhanced Flight Height Estimates of Migrating Roseate Terns

RECORDING 11

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2:00-2:15        Peter Paton – Evaluating high resolution offshore movements of marine birds: Will Common Terns act as a surrogate species for the sympatric endangered Roseate Tern?

2:15-2:30        Elizabeth Craig – Evaluating effects of attaching GPS tags using leg-loop harnesses on

2:30-2:45        Common and Roseate Terns in the Northwest Atlantic Section Q&A + Discussion

2:45 PM Roseate Tern Full Life-Cycle Talks, Patty Szczys session lead

2:45-3:00P      Patty Szczys – Sampling on the Migration Route: Genetic Structure and Population Assignment of Roseate Terns on the East Atlantic Flyway

3:00-3:15        Grace Cormons – Feeding strategies and diet of Roseate Terns in Brazil

3:15-3:25 Section Q&A + Discussion

3:25 PM Additional Discussion Topics & Wrap-up

  • Update on Unusual Tern Mortality Initiative (Alison Kocek for Stephanie Avery-Gomm)
  • Staging Efforts
    • Jeff Spendelow – Highlights from the 2025 Research of Staging Terns on Cape Cod
  • Wintering Work
  • Caribbean Colonies
  • Other Topics?

4:00 PM         END

RECORDING  12

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