Hi all and welcome to our new Ocean Ornithology blogspot!

Hello and welcome to our new blog,

Through this blog, we will be discussing marine ecology issues, marine bird sightings and primarily our work with BirdWatch Ireland. Firstly, I think it is appropriate to introduce ourselves! The two of us, Paul Baker and Paul Whitelaw, both work for BirdWatch Ireland as fieldworkers conducting seabird surveys along the coastlines of Co. Sligo and Co. Donegal.

 Paul Whitelaw (on the left) and Paul Baker (on the right).

Whilst working with BirdWatch Ireland, Paul and I will be working on two different projects; Seabird Count and MarPAMM. We will be contributing to the ongoing work of Seabird Count. Seabirds Count is the fourth census of all breeding seabirds in Britain and Ireland, following on from Operation Seafarer (1969/70), the Seabird Colony Register (SCR; 1985-88) and Seabird 2000 (1998-2002). Fieldwork along 40,000 km of the British and Irish coastline has commenced in 2015 and will be completed in 2018. This census aims for the same survey coverage as during Seabird 2000 which entailed counting over eight million breeding seabirds at 3,300 coastal and 900 inland colonies. During the work with Seabird Count we will be conducting land and boat surveys of seabirds nesting along the coast and inland. Later on in the summer, we will also be planning to go out onto uninhabited islands along the Sligo/Donegal coast to survey burrow-nesting seabirds.  

The main project that we will be working on is the Marine Protected Area Management and Monitoring (MarPAMM) project. Over the next four years, the MarPAMM project will develop models and management plans for protected habitats and species across the regional seas of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. We will be monitoring seabird species via European Seabirds at Sea (ESAS) marine surveys, aerial surveys of marine seas, GPS tracking of selected species and population counts of breeding seabirds during the summer as well as marine birds staying around our coastline in the winter.

Over the next few summers, we will be doing some really interesting work, witnessing Ireland’s fauna and visiting beautiful areas of Sligo and Donegal. So keep an eye on the new Ocean Ornithology blog to keep up to date on our work and the exciting wonders we get to see!

Until the next post,

The Paul's