Drone-Monitoring: Improving the Detectability of Threatened Marine Megafauna

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs; or drones) are an emerging tool to provide a safer, cheaper, and quieter alternative to traditional methods of studying marine megafauna in a natural environment. The UFES Nectology Laboratory team developed a drone-monitoring to assess the impacts on megafauna related to the Fundão dam mining tailings disaster in the Southeast Brazilian coast. We have developed a systematic pattern to optimize the available resources by covering the largest possible area. The fauna observer can monitor the environment from a privileged angle with virtual reality and subsequently analyzes each video captured in 4k, allowing to deepening behavioral ecology knowledge. Applying the drone-monitoring method, we have observed an increasing detectability by adjusting the camera angle, height, orientation, and speed of the UAV; which saved time and resources for monitoring turtles, sea birds, large fish, and especially small cetaceans efficiently and comparably.

Buried Birds

This chapter begins by illustrating how the author saw a Sooty shearwater while standing on a boat with no land on the horizon. The bird reminds the author of the freedom a child-body has. Other pelagic species also move the author. Working as a naturalist aboard a small boat in the Gulf of California one winter, after hours on deck staring at water, the author spotted a Xantus's murrelet. The author loves sea birds because of their differences from “regular” land-based birds. But preference is for the many species of pelagic birds who hide their lives on land. The ones like prions who bury themselves to lay an egg, whose chicks hunker in the dark until fledging or trundle out to sea before they can even fly. These birds know how dangerous earth can be.

Some interactions between coastal fisheries and sea birds in the Aegean Sea

In this study, it is aimed to determine the some interactions between various fishery types and seabirds, results of this interaction and sea bird species that have been interacting due to secondary attraction factors. A total of 80 fishermen, working in fish farms, small scale fishery (SSF) and lagoons located in Izmir, Aydın and Muğla were face-to-face interviewed between September 2016 and December 2018. The great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis), great white egret (Ardea alba), some yelkouan shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) and great white pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus) are the bird species that have an interaction with coastal fishermen and sea-cage fish farms. 82% of employees in sea-cage fish farms mentioned that they have an interaction with sea birds in winter, besides %50 of SSF have an interaction with sea birds in summer. The difference between interaction rate according to seasons has been found as statistically significant (p<0.05). 33% of employees in fish farms expressed that they see sea birds during the day. This ratio is 21.7% and 15% for SSF and fishermen in lagoon, respectively. Furthermore, 8.3% of fishermen in lagoon, 11% of employees in fish farms and SSF mentioned that they have an interaction with seabirds especially in the morning time.

The Goodsir brothers from Fife, Scotland: contributions to anatomy, marine zoology and Arctic exploration in the nineteenth century

Three Goodsir brothers, John, Henry (“Harry”) and Robert, from Fife, Scotland, all shared an early interest in marine zoology in the early 1800s. They all went on to receive medical training, with the eldest brother, John, eventually becoming Professor of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh. John's primary claim to biological fame rests on his contributions to cell-doctrine, in which his eminence was on a par with that of Rudolf Virchow. In his youth, however, John (in concert with younger brother Harry) had become interested in marine zoology, and, as students in Edinburgh, they shared rooms with marine zoologist Edward Forbes. Harry Goodsir, however, was much more of a marine naturalist than John. His life was tragically cut short by his perishing, together with the rest of his shipmates on HMS Erebus, on the third Franklin expedition to the Arctic regions, that one being by ship during a quest for the elusive Northwest Passage. A younger brother, Robert, undertook two later Arctic voyages in search of Harry and his doomed shipmates, making natural history observations on sea birds and marine organisms along the way.

The C-Type Lysozyme from the upper Gastrointestinal Tract of Opisthocomus hoatzin, the Stinkbird

Muramidases/lysozymes are important bio-molecules, which cleave the glycan backbone in the peptidoglycan polymer found in bacterial cell walls. The glycoside hydrolase (GH) family 22 C-type lysozyme, from the folivorous bird Opisthocomus hoazin (stinkbird), was expressed in Aspergillus oryzae, and a set of variants was produced. All variants were enzymatically active, including those designed to probe key differences between the Hoatzin enzyme and Hen Egg White lysozyme. Four variants showed improved thermostability at pH 4.7, compared to the wild type. The X-ray structure of the enzyme was determined in the apo form and in complex with chitin oligomers. Bioinformatic analysis of avian GH22 amino acid sequences showed that they separate out into three distinct subgroups (chicken-like birds, sea birds and other birds). The Hoatzin is found in the “other birds” group and we propose that this represents a new cluster of avian upper-gut enzymes.

Genome Sequence of a Gyrovirus Associated with Ashy Storm-Petrel

Ashy storm-petrels (order Procellariiformes) are seabirds that are found along the coast of California to Baja Mexico. A novel gyrovirus was identified from a cloacal swab of an ashy storm-petrel, which is the second gyrovirus to be identified in sea birds, the first being found in the related northern fulmar.

Are there conservation implications for kangaroos feeding on sea birds?

This research note documents an observation of a wild western grey kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus) feeding on a dead silver gull (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae) at Lucky Bay in the Cape Le Grand National Park on the south coast of Western Australia. Published evidence suggests that this behaviour is not unique and could be widespread in Western Australia and further afield. We consider why the kangaroo may be feeding on the dead gull and possible implications for conservation programs relying on poison meat baits to control introduced species.