ADU travels, expeditions and events

Visiting USA: Pacific Seabirds and The Mid-West

With Katie Swift of Fish & Wildlife Service, Hawaii: bravely recovering from sea sickness on Santa Rosa Island

In February 2002 I visited the United States, to attend the 29th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group (www.pacificseabirdgroup.org. The meeting was held in Santa Barbara, two hours north (by bus) from Los Angeles. The venue was the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (www.sbnature.org) on the outskirts of town in a very pleasant setting with surrounding oaks full of calling passerines. The museum had an interesting exhibition of 18th and 19th century illustrators, including several Audubons – both of the original hand-coloured prints and of the copper plates from which they were made.

I gave a co-authored presentation on the potential of the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species (www.wcmc.org.uk/cms) in improving the protection of seabirds on a global scale. At the meeting special symposia were held on the American White Pelican and on Oil and California's Seabirds. Among the papers and posters presented of greatest interest to me was a good suite on foraging ecology and several on efforts to rid Pacific seabird islands of alien predators. The abstracts of the meeting will be published in Pacific Seabirds in due course.

I also attended an afternoon meeting of the North Pacific Albatross Working Group where international efforts to conserve Laysan, Black-footed and Short-tailed Albatrosses was discussed, following on from its inaugural meeting which I chaired in Honolulu in 2000. At this meeting I gave an account of the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (www.ea.gov.au/biodiversity/international/albatross/agreement-english.html) and its potential to include the northern Pacific albatrosses after it comes into force, probably later this year.

Sucking icicles in Illinois

A lunchtime meeting was held of the new Editorial Board of Marine Ornithology, which I co-edit with Tony Gaston of Canada. From 2001 the journal is being co-published by the African and Pacific Seabird Groups and is to become a free e-journal (www.marineornithology.org), as well as continuing with hard copy available by subscription.

I went on two all-day outings, both to the Channel Islands National Park (www.nps.gov/chis) and National Marine Sanctuary (www.cinms.nos.noaa.gov). On the first trip we went to Santa Rosa, where we landed briefly after a three-hour supply journey that got me pretty sea-sick.  On the second we sailed close around the Anacapa Islands (being successfully rid of rats by aerial dispersion of poisoned bait) and then landed on Santa Cruz for a few hours in kinder sea conditions.  Highlights of these trips for me were seeing Rhinoceros Auklets, Xantus’ Murrelets and Grey Whales for the first time.

Van Gogh and Gauguin self portraits

During my return to Cape Town I made a stopover in the small university town of Carbondale, Illinois to visit my eldest daughter, Dana Hargrove, for a few days.   This was a very special experience for me as we had never met before. Running in the snow in the early mornings in the sylvan campus setting was fun but cold.   With a day stopover in The Netherlands I made use of my time by visiting the Van Gogh and Gauguin Exhibition of paintings from their tempestuous sojourn together in Arles (www.vangoghgauguin.com) at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.   Seeing three of Van Gogh's sunflower paintings displayed side by side was a special treat: the first time they have been together since the end of the 19^th century.

My thanks go to the African and Pacific Seabird Groups (Lisa Ballance) and the U.S. Geological Survey (Harry Carter) for funding my trip to California.

John Cooper
March 2002