I had an incredible day out on Monterey Bay where I saw my dissertation come to life! I recently finished my thesis at UCSC with Dan Costa and my work focused on top predator hotspots for conservation along the West Coast.

Melinda Fowler at San Nicholas Island, CA--It's elephant seal madness at Ano Nuevo, but a small subset of the UCSC TOPP researchers left the craziness to retreat to the island paradise of San Nicolas Island.  Our goal while soaking up the island's sun is to recapture the 10 sea lions that we deployed satellite and GPS tags on in November.  San Nicolas is a beautiful island, and we had some sunny days, but our work is not a vacation.  We scan for the VHF frequencies everyday, hoping to catch one of the sea lions home from her foraging trip.

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz, Long Marine Lab--Accountants have tax season, teachers... back to school, malls have the holidays: TOPP biologists are busy now...when many species are ready for tags, all at once! TOPP biologists are busy deploying satellite tags on five species....and that's just today!

We just returned from a trip to San Nicolas Island in the Channel Islands off the coast of California.  We deployed 10 satellite/GPS tags on adult, lactating female California sea lions.  These tags will also collect temperature, light level and depth.  These data will enable us to look at not only the location of the females while they are foraging, but some of the oceanographic conditions, as well as their dive behavior.  Sea lions can be quite skittish and are faster than you think when trying to catch them, but we had a successful trip.  We choose adult, lactating females because i