Interview with OWCN Pre-trained Volunteer Jeanette Stone

A few days ago I had a moment to tape a couple of short interviews with some of the OWCN pre-trained volunteers who were participating in the response. Anyone who works in oiled wildlife response knows that we couldn’t do any of this without the generosity, hard work and dedication of the people who donate their time and energy to care for the affected animals. I’ll add these to the blog over the next few days when I have a moment to edit the clips. I apologize to those many other volunteers I didn’t have time to interview. You all deserve recognition and a great deal of thanks.

This interview was filmed while Jeannette had a short break in the wash room. There’s a lot of background noise, but hopefully you can hear her responses to my questions. By the way, please bear with the questions, I’m no Mike Wallace.

-Greg

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Day 10: SFBOWCEC

I must apologize for not posting the past couple of days. As Kaiti has noted in her past entries, time gets away from you way too easily here. In fact, I’d forgotten to check the score of the Charger’s game yesterday and only found out they’d won when Mike called in the evening to see how things were going. Anyone who knows me knows it’s VERY unusual for me not to be on top of a Charger’s game.

So back to the update, we received two oiled coots on the 7th and one on the 8th. The two birds from the 7th were washed yesterday afternoon and are stable this morning. The bird admitted yesterday afternoon was caught in the morning and stabilized in the field before being transported. It was pretty obvious he’d already received some care because last night and this morning he was very active in his cage. His blood tests looked good so he’ll be washed this afternoon after being fed a few times this morning.

We’ve been doing pre-release exams on several of the birds today. I just saw the blood work and it’s looking like some of the birds will be returning to the wild in the very near future. We’ve been talking with the Wildlife Branch Director this morning. He’ll get the ball rolling to see about getting approval from the Unified Command and finding a safe and appropriate location for the release. We’ll make sure to keep you guys posted as things progress.

-Greg

Day 10 of Dubai Star Oil Spill – Report from the field

It has been so busy these past few days that yesterday I flat out forgot to recognize that two years ago to the day (7 Nov 2007) we had the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay.  Instead of 400-800 gallons of oil, over 50,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the Bay during the Cosco Busan incident.  While I am glad that the Dubai Star spilled only a small amount of oil, it is sad that we still have spills with such frequency just here in the Bay.

Today was another fairly slow day with one heavily oiled American Coot captured on Bay Farm Island.  Since we have put a lot of pressure on the coots in trying to capture the oiled ones, they are getting very wary when we are around.  Tomorrow we will use the net guns again (and I have added a close up picture of the net gun for those of you who have never seen one) if we can find a roost of coots to trap at.

After tomorrow, the stabilization trailer will get hauled back to Davis and we will drop down to one roaming capture team for the rest of the week.  We encourage anyone who sees a stranded bird that they think is oiled to call the hot line (877-  UCD – OWCN or 877-823-6926)

- Nils

Day 9 of Dubai Star Oil Spill – Report from the field

Another beautiful, sunny day here in Alameda and another day where the birds have just barely dribbled in.  Duane and Harv, who have been working from a kayak, just called to say that they captured one of the oiled American Coots that we have targeted and earlier today they caught another one of the oiled coots.  Slowly and surely we are getting the worst of the coots.

Otherwise, things have been quiet.  A reporter from Alameda came by to hear a bit about how the spill response is going.  I have also been trying to catch up on some of the paper work that seems to accumulate during spills.  We have a log of birds that comes through the stabilization facility and I entered those data into a spreadsheet.  I also entered the names of all of the people who have helped on the Recovery and Transportation side of the spill response.  We have been fortunate to have the help of about 30 people, all with 24 hour HAZWOPER training and training in how to capture and recover oiled wildlife (except for a few volunteers who have just helped on transporting birds to the Fairfield facility).  Two network organizations have provided most of the trained help – the International Bird Rescue Research Center (http://www.ibrrc.org/) and PRBO Conservation Science (http://www.prbo.org/).  The staff of both of these groups has been fantastic.

- Nils

Day 8 of Dubai Star Oil Spill – Report from the field

I left Davis in the dark this morning, about 0445, so that I could meet up with Yvette and the field crews at 0630 in Alameda.   Alameda is beginning to feel like home and for those of you who have never been there, it is a really great town.  As one person told me – “It is like a Midwestern town on the beach”.  Beautiful houses, nice, friendly people, and a happening downtown.

Today was the day (a rainy one at that) to try out the Coda net gun.  This is a device that looks like a big gun with four barrels.  Each barrel has a weight in it attached to a net, and the weights are blown out of the barrels by a charge.  We place this net in an area where we think that birds that we want to catch will congregate.  For the American Coots that we are trying to catch one great gathering spot as been a freshwater seep along the Bay Shore shoreline where the coots come to drink.

(Yvette checking to see if coots are in front of the net gun)

We set up the net launcher and despite a few glitches we managed to catch 10 coots in our first shot.

By and large, these coots were in good shape.  We waited a bit and then we did another shot and caught three more coots.  Overall, of the 13 coots that we captured, only three of them were oiled and those birds just had spots of oil on their legs.  We cleaned the oil off the legs and then released all of the birds that we captured.  Tomorrow we will target the heavily oiled birds that are still out there.

(Yvette and Monty removing a coot from the net)

Loss of Time Phenomenon (Part II)

Yesterday I mentioned the loss of time phenomenon that can occur with oil spill responders. Often we find ourselves dashing about the facility, tubing birds, cleaning cages, monitoring pools, etc. When we find a chance to look up we realize that hours, even a day, has passed.

Today while driving to the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center at 6 a.m. (yup, that’s right) I realized that a very big day had passed for a good friend of the OWCN. Although I’ve only been with the OWCN for a year now, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and get to know Mike Ziccardi’s graduate student Julia Burco. Yesterday Julia had her Exit Seminar. For those not familiar with the term it was basically her big day to present her research and complete the process for obtaining her Ph.D.

Julia Burco at her Exit Seminar.

For the past five(-ish) years Julia has been conducting research to address the many gaps in knowledge that exist in understanding the ecology of aspergillosis in highly susceptible birds, such as accurate antemortem diagnosis, role of fungal burdens in the environment, and the importance of host susceptibility. Recently she presented her research at the OWCN’s Annual Rehabilitation Conference in San Diego where many of you were able to meet her!

Anyway, although it’s a day late, the OWCN team would like to extend a huge congratulations to Julia! We’re all incredibly proud of her accomplishment.

-Kaiti

Day 7 of Dubai Star Oil Spill – Report From the Field

For me, a day back in Davis seeing the family and collecting some traps to try on the remaining oiled American Coots.  Today, Yvette was the Recovery and Transportation supervisor and she and the three field teams had a quiet day (the quiet day before the storm?).  As far as I know, no birds were caught, although part of the day was spent scouting out good areas to try to capture some of the coots that we know are oiled.   Even oiled, the coots appear to be pretty hardy but from birds that we have collected, we know that the oil can burn their skin, so we are anxious to get them out and cleaned.

I head back to the field early tomorrow morning where we will try to trap coots using a net gun.  Stay tuned for that.  The incredible, calm, warm weather has changed and there are even forecasts of showers over the next few days.  Either way, we will be out there looking for oiled wildlife.

- Nils

Loss of Time Phenomenon

So I was hoping to post a couple of days ago, so you can imagine my surprise when I sat down and saw that I’m just a little past my original deadline. Whoops! However, I’ve been reassured by my co-workers and amazing crew of pre-trained volunteers that this loss of time phenomenon is quite common here at the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center.

As you can tell it’s been quite a busy here at facility. The days have been filled with washing, drying, conditioning, cage building and, of course, CLEANING! But all the work is worth it when you see how happy the birds are. Below is a happy Dunlin showing off his cool bands and strutting around the habitat designed and built by the OWCN staff and pre-trained volunteers.

The OWCN staff would like to thank all the pre-trained volunteers, especially Kit Perry with Lindsay Wildlife Museum, for making this amazing habitat. I think this little one is pretty pleased with the work! (Photo credit: Cheryl Reynolds, IBRRC)

At this point in time we have received 45 live birds at the facility. Although most of them have been washed and are now in the process of regaining their “waterproofness”, the work continues. This means the kitchen staff (the wonderful Nancy Mix and pre-trained volunteers) are still busy prepping meals, the OWCN teams are busy monitoring our little patients’ recovery, and the endless stream of cleaning and laundry duties continues. But the overall goal of releasing these birds back into the environment keeps all of us, staff and pre-trained volunteers, going.

As for the loss of time phenomenon I hear it comes in waves. So if you don’t hear from me for a day or two, don’t worry! I promise to post again as soon as I can. If you have any suggestions on things you’d like to read about on the blog, please feel free to leave a comment!

- Kaiti

From the SFBOWCEC: Day 7 Dubai Star Response

We had six oiled birds arrive at the facility last night. They are all stable this morning and blood values are good, but the skin irritation observed when they were admitted last night has gotten worse. This has been a problem we’ve observed in almost all the birds affected by this spill so we’re going to go ahead and wash them this afternoon. Normally we’d give them more rehab care prior to wash, but they were stabilized at the RAT (recovery and transportation) rig yesterday before transport, and we need to get the product off their skin so it doesn’t cause more damage.

The shore birds are in an outside aviary and their waterproofing is steadily improving. They are also eating well and gaining weight so that’s a good sign. The coots that were already washed are spending their days outside in shallow pools and continue to improve. Even though they’re eating, we’re still giving them medications and supplemental food a couple of times a day. I’ve enclosed a short video clip showing one of the birds being treated.

-Greg

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Day 6 of Dubai Star Oil Spill

Just call me Captain Zodiac.  Today was a boat day and I was fortunate enough to have the help of two terrific people with lots of boat experience, Russ Bradley and Phil Henderson.  Both of these biologists have spent many years on the Farallon Islands studying marine animals out there for PRBO Conservation Science.  As a not very good boat driver myself, they gave me a lot of great tips on getting around on the water.

Our objective was to see if we could find oiled birds that were still out on the water and try to catch them out there.  In principle it sounds easy but in practice it proved to be a bit more difficult.  After launching near Jack London Square, we cruised along likely spots along the circumference of the island of Alameda.   One of the great sites that we passed was the breakwater off of the old Alameda Naval Air Station where over 1000 Brown Pelicans were roosting with a number of shorebirds and other species.  We looked for oiled pelicans but did not see any.  This pelican roost is actually the largest in San Francisco Bay.

We went to one deep water harbor called the Seaplane Lagoon, and there we chased an oiled female Surf Scoter, but she was very active and did not let us get close.

Near Crab Cove, were the Rat Rig is situated, we battled an oiled American Coot and finally Phil Henderson, with a mighty shove of the landing net, snagged the coot.  This was a very oiled individual so I am particularly happy that we caught that bird.

The number of oiled birds that we caught today went up, perhaps because the weather was a bit cooler but also because the oiled birds must be getting more stressed.  Tomorrow we will continue to have people out in the field  (although I get a day off).  All in all, I think that we captured about 8 birds consisting of three grebe species (Western, Horned, and Eared) and a smattering of other species.

- Nils