Looking Back to Move Forward
By Christine Gardiner, Toxicology Laboratory Director
Bald Eagle © Ken Archer
Bald Eagles, majestic symbols of freedom, boast a great comeback from their declining populations 60 years ago. These eagles, with their pure white heads and six-foot wingspans, are hard to miss flying overhead. But they haven’t always been so prevalent in New England skies. In the mid-1900s, these eagles suffered a dramatic population decline, largely due to habitat loss and the impacts of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), a widely used pesticide at the time. Fortunately, since the ban on DDT, Maine’s Bald Eagle population has grown from 21 nesting pairs in 1967 to 733 nesting pairs in 2018 at last count (Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife).
Now, these iconic raptors struggle against another ubiquitous environmental poison that impacts their populations in Maine—PFAS—and they are not alone.
A male Common Eider © Giedriius/Shutterstock
Common Eiders, the largest duck in the Northern Hemisphere (Sea Duck Joint Venture), inhabit coastal regions, where they contribute significantly to marine ecosystems. They are commonly found in cold marine environments such as rocky shores and offshore islands, where they gather in colonies during breeding season.
Eiders are a favorite among bird lovers for their striking appearance—male eiders sport a distinctive black and white plumage, as well as a green nape. The birds are also captivating for their unique nesting habits—they line their nests with down feathers plucked from their own breasts to provide extra warmth for incubating eggs.
BRI’s Long-term Raptor and Waterbird Studies
BRI has studied birds as indicators of environmental health for decades. Due to their relative ease of observation and capture, sensitivity to habitat change, and high trophic level, birds are excellent indicators of environmental impacts, such as contaminants, habitat loss, or climate change.
Working closely with the state of Maine, BRI’s Raptor Program began helping with banding and tracking initiatives in 2001, and by 2004 BRI researchers were collecting Bald Eagle samples to measure contaminants, most notably mercury, and test for genetic biomarkers to help track the success and threats to the growing population. Currently BRI has archived thousands of samples collected over the last two decades of Bald Eagle monitoring.
Common Eider Pair resting on ice © Ken Archer.
When Maine’s Common Eider population began to decline, researchers wanted to understand why. In 2016, BRI waterfowl researchers conducted studies to evaluate eider duckling survival and to develop potential management actions to increase or sustain eider populations. In doing so, BRI tracked colony and nesting success in Casco Bay by banding female eiders, drawing blood, collecting nonviable eggs, and conducting weekly surveys during the spring nesting season. For the last decade, BRI has conducted these monitoring efforts and collected samples for contaminants and genetic biomarkers, and similarly to the Bald Eagle monitoring efforts, the Institute now has hundreds of archived samples.
Ready to Respond in a Crisis
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a large class of organic chemicals used in nonstick, strain resistant, and water repellant coatings in textiles, upholstery, commercial goods and food packaging. PFAS are also an ingredient in fire-fighting foams commonly referred to as AFFF (aqueous film-forming foams), which are widely used across the United States at municipal fire training sites, Department of Defense sites, and industrial manufacturing sites that work with chemicals or petroleum products. (To learn more about PFAS and its harmful effects, please read One Drop of Water’s previous article The State of PFAS in Maine.)
Christine Gardiner conducts a mercury analysis on BRI’s Nippon MA-3000
Leveraging our collection of archived samples, BRI began testing blood and egg samples for PFAS in 2023.
In August of 2024, AFFF was accidentally released at Brunswick Landing, site of the former Brunswick Naval Air Station just two miles inland of Casco Bay, where inevitably some of the foam was discharged into the Bay.
This spill site is located in the area where BRI has been conducting Bald Eagle and Common Eider sampling for years, and this unique situation enables our researchers to compare pre- and post-spill samples. In April of 2025, BRI researchers conducted thorough post-spill sample collections for both eagles and eiders in order to determine the extent of the AFFF and PFAS effects and compare them to the pre-spill baselines. Sample analysis and results are still ongoing, but BRI plans to conduct a similar sampling effort in the spring of 2026 to determine the effects two years after the spill.
Stay tuned for updates…
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Christine Gardiner joined BRI in the fall of 2025 as the new director of the Toxicology Lab to oversee and expand BRI’s laboratory capabilities, with a particular focus on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance methodology and analysis.
Drones Offer a New Perspective for BRI Scientists
By Sarah Dodgin, Ecological Analyst
For five days in December, through freezing temperatures and persistent winds, bat biologist Bri Frankina and offshore wind staff scientist Anna Soccorsi work side by side along the coast of southern New Jersey. For eight hours each day, they focus on keeping a small drone—weighing less than one pound—stable as it hovers up to 400 feet above the ground. In these conditions, every second matters; the longer the drone is exposed to the cold, and the harder it works against the wind, the faster the battery drains.
The objective of this fieldwork is to calibrate four newly installed Motus Wildlife Tracking System stations (motus.org), each requiring precise measurements at multiple altitudes from a barometric GPS affixed to the drone. However adverse the conditions are, this team is prepared with thick gloves to keep their fingers warm and dexterous as they maneuver the drone with its remote controller. After about 15 minutes, the uncrewed aircraft gracefully drops in altitude, the once faint, high-pitched whirring sound increases in volume by the second. When close enough, one of the scientists reaches out and gently plucks the hand-sized drone from the air. The battery is nearly empty, so the team swaps it for a fully charged replacement and prepares to send it back up. They repeat this process, racing against the shortened daylight hours, to ensure all angles and positions of airspace around the Motus station’s antennas are sufficiently surveyed.
The State of the Science
The integration of drones into wildlife research and environmental studies has expanded rapidly in recent years, and BRI is rising to meet this moment. Uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS; drones) support a wide range of applications by using high-resolution imagery to conduct species population censuses, document habitat change after hurricanes or wildfires, and aid in invasive species management. Drones can also serve as platforms for carrying or transporting specialized equipment, such as GPS units, temperature sensors, and wildlife satellite or radio tags. In many cases, working remotely reduces risk to researchers and minimizes disturbance to the animals being studied.
The ability to remotely study seabird colonies offers a clear example of the advantages of drones. Often located on remote cliffs or offshore islands, these sites can be difficult and sometimes dangerous for scientists to access. By using drones, researchers can census multiple species in a matter of minutes from the safety of a research vessel, while capturing detailed images of nests and breeding birds hundreds of feet above sea level. Maintaining this distance allows pilots to collect data without altering animal behavior, which ultimately improves data quality and reliability.
Michael Wethington, co-director of BRI’s Marine Mammal Program, launches a drone over a penguin colony in Antarctica. Photo courtesy Michael Wethington.
Meet BRI’s Drone Pilots
BRI’s interest in drone technology emerged from a call to rethink how certain projects were approached. The first application came from a need to track radio-tagged bats in Vermont. To prepare for the project, bat biologist Bri Frankina studied for the FAA Part 107 exam, which required learning to read aeronautical charts, memorizing airspace regulations, and understanding how weather conditions affect aircraft performance. After passing the exam and completing several test flights, Bri outfitted a drone with a telemetry receiver and flew it through forested areas near a mine reclamation site where bats had recently been captured and tagged.
This aerial approach represented a novel alternative to traditional bat telemetry, which typically involves driving along roads with a large antenna in search of a “bat signal.” Because drones are nimble and not confined to roads, they offer the potential for a faster and more efficient way to locate tagged animals—an approach BRI continues to refine for future telemetry studies.
Bat biologist Bri Frankina wearing a protective Tyveck suit and helmet while servicing temperature and humidity loggers in a hibernaculum, where bats shelter for winter dormancy.
The next demand for drone expertise was spurred by an offshore wind project which led to Offshore Wind Staff Scientist, Anna Soccorsi’s, first flight. As this type of work might imply, the mission took place not on land, but from a fishing vessel out at sea. Flying drones under any condition is challenging. Instead of looking up at the drone to decide its movements, the operator is staring down at a screen, which can be disorienting. Hand control is extremely important. The slip of a thumb in the wrong direction can send the drone off course, or worse, careening towards the ground. On a rocking boat, these challenges are amplified with the added risk that a single misstep could send the drone into the water and end the mission. Supported by Michael Wethington, co-director of the Marine Mammal Program, Anna rose to the challenge. Despite the obstacles, the mission was a success and marked a major milestone in BRI’s expanding drone program, adding offshore piloting to its repertoire.
Michael Wethington prepares for a drone to take flight from the back of a fishing vessel off the coast of Massachusetts.
Executing a smooth flight requires finesse, focus, and extensive practice. Just over a year into flying drones professionally, Anna now owns two personal drones and spends much of her free time capturing images and video of Long Island’s dynamic coastlines and marshes (her work can be found on Instagram @gaia_aerialimagery). For Anna, the greatest joy of flying drones along the shores of Long Island is revealing marine life that so often goes unnoticed. From above, her photographs and videos capture both the beauty and the unease of a changing coast—shorelines shifting, dunes reshaped, and tidal marshes in flux—while migrating fish, rays, and even whales glide quietly through the frame. When asked about what it has been like to see Anna’s confidence grow as a pilot, Michael’s review was glowing. “It’s been a real pleasure working with Anna,” he says. “She’s genuinely passionate about the methodology and the opportunities it creates, and she brings a strong mix of careful planning, practical troubleshooting, and real curiosity and excitement. She’s also an exceptionally capable pilot, and it’s easy to rely on her in the field.”
Back in New Jersey, Anna’s honed skills were put to the test when she and Bri teamed up for the first time this past December. Despite facing strong headwinds of up to 40 miles per hour, they successfully deployed drones to calibrate the detection range of four Motus stations, a critical step in ensuring accurate wildlife tracking.
Anna Soccorsi launches one of her personal drones from a beach on Long Island, New York.
All Motus stations are equipped with an antenna tuned to receive a specific radio frequency, allowing it to detect birds, bats, or insects fitted with transmitting tags as they move through the airspace. Together, more than 2,000 Motus stations form a global network used to track animal migration across continents. Because these data are shared by researchers worldwide, careful calibration of newly installed stations is essential for accurately estimating the three-dimensional positions of tagged animals. Bri and Anna’s work will help strengthen the performance of the broader Motus network, ultimately improving how scientists study migration across species and ecosystems.
Planning for the Future
Each drone pilot at BRI is a contributing member of the Wildlife Remote Acoustics and Imagery Lab (WRAIL). Only about 6% of licensed drone pilots in the United States are women (womenwhodrone.co). BRI’s two female scientists Bri and Anna are helping to demonstrate that women can, and do, take on these technical roles. This visibility is timely, as the drone program is growing—BRI anticipates adding three additional pilots to the team by the end of 2026.
As drone-based surveys are transforming how scientists collect data and are becoming more common practice, advances in data processing are keeping pace. For imagery-intensive surveys such as species identification, population counts, and monitoring habitat change, methods for extracting meaningful information from images have advanced rapidly over the past decade. Modern computer vision and deep-learning tools now make it increasingly feasible to scale analyses across massive image collections and produce consistent measurements. In practice, this means less time spent on manual annotation. Humans remain a key component to data interpretation, but these advances free researchers to focus on more nuanced and challenging scientific questions.
Michael and Anna are working proactively to identify where drones can be rapidly deployed across BRI centers and labs, whether in response to natural disasters, wildlife incidents, or long-term monitoring efforts. This forward-looking planning positions BRI to act quickly when emerging situations arise. Michael, whose research experience includes studying penguins in Antarctica (featured in a previous ezine issue), brings 13 years of drone expertise to the program. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t extremely excited about the next few years of this program,” he says.
Loon Magic
By Shearon Murphy, Wildlife Biologist, Science Communications Specialist/Artist/Illustrator
Flagstaff Lake in western Maine, with a stunning view of iconic Mount Bigelow, a long mountain range with several summits. Maine’s loon populations thrive in the state’s large, deep-water lakes. © Shearon Murphy
It was early summer, 1997, and the wind shifted gently across the golden shallows of Flagstaff Lake, sending serpents of light undulating across submerged sands. Wild and haunted, the impounded waters of Flagstaff now pooled over the memorial banks of the Dead River and spread across the northern foot of the hazy blue Bigelow Mountain Range. Jeff Fair grasped the steel bar on the center console of a Boston Whaler with his right hand and pointed with his left at a grass and shrub vegetated shoreline on a small island in the distance. “Hey, Billy – see that spot right there…?” It reminded him of a specific Common Loon’s nest on another lake, some 50 miles from here, a decade or so gone by.
Billy Hanson, Jeff’s partner-in-loon-management-and-shenanigans squinted and grinned from his position at the helm; he swung wide and skirted close to shore to inspect the area.
Fresh out of college and completely naive to the mysteries of loons and Maine’s wilderness waters, I clutched the console bar opposite Jeff, full of awe. I had just met Jeff within the past 24 hours, and I was starstruck by the loon-sage from Alaska whose rich lore preceded him. I was agog as we skulked along the edge of the island and realized the form of the loon, revealed like a manifesting shadow figure, sitting vigilantly on a nest right where Jeff had pointed.
As the hours unfolded that day, the two experienced biologists demonstrated to me what an honest workday looks like when standard operating procedure synergizes with true passion and curiosity—with true joy.
Jeff embodied a deep, complex connection with this work, the magic of where it takes place, the comradery among those who do it, and its impact on loons and those who love them. He was both scientifically precise and spiritually observant. Poetic by nature, he carried a small notebook and a stubby #2 pencil where he jotted field notes alongside the musings of a lyrical writer. We were instant soul-friends. Together, we celebrated every one of the day’s discoveries, from new loon eggs to resplendent frogs, reveling in the opportunity to share such joy with the universe in the company of another who “got it.”
Billy obliged us. Intense, ambitious and pleasantly mischievous, he was a power-company guy, charged with attending to wildlife studies related to several hydroelectric projects in Maine, Flagstaff among them. When it was recognized that Common Loon nesting success could be negatively impacted by water level fluctuations brought about by hydro operations, it became Billy’s job to mitigate the problem. He went straight to the expert—Jeff. That was in the 1980s, and Jeff already had a strong history of loon monitoring and management under his belt, having found himself possessed by the wailing spirits of Lake Umbagog and other wild places in the late 1970s. Their work together resulted in an indefatigable lifelong friendship, despite their contrasting ways of being. I would later learn that happens when people spend a lot of time together looking after loons. On that idyllic day in 1997, the two friends spent much time reminiscing about their cherished days of “figuring it all out.”
Rafts provide extra protection for nesting loons from flooding when water levels fluctuate, such as on reservoirs. The raft canopy protects the young chicks from predators such as eagles. © Shearon Murphy
And figure it out they did. By 1997, successful Common Loon monitoring and management programs were well established on several hydro reservoirs along the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers, thanks largely to their work, along with a strong handful of other souls bewitched by loons. I learned that our mission, as it stood on that (my first) day, was mandated by the hydro facility’s federal operating license. When issued, a hydro license would include orders to address identified impacts to wildlife resources (among a myriad of other considerations from water quality to recreational use). Some efforts—like our loon mission that day—are decreed to endure for the life of the license (usually 30-40 years). Upon expiration, new licenses would be created, likely with similar lifespans and similar orders regarding Loons. I realized that what began in Jeff’s and Billy’s prime years of field biology bliss will outlast their careers. What began that day for me will outlast mine.
So, it was necessity (and perhaps luck) that brought us to this niche of work, but it was the binding spectral magic of the loon and its domain that kept us there. I was blessed to spend many more oneiric summer days in boats with Jeff, seeking him out every time I got wind that he was “back east.” He’s mentored my doings on the lakes of the upper Kennebec for the past quarter century and guided my reporting with his meticulous and thoughtful writing style.
But there’s something much more intangible in time spent with Jeff, the essence of which can only be fully understood by those that have drifted beside him in some small boat, creeping along the shallows and verdant shores of a luscious boreal lake—the grinding thrum of an outboard or the cadence of paddles and creaking thwarts and the perpetual lapping of waves punctuated by eruptions of laughter. Celebration.
Gratefully, scores of eager summer interns and long-timers alike have had the opportunity to share that space as I have. Any who have been there will tell you it is so much more than a transfer of knowledge that occurs in that synapse. It is access to true comradery and mutually celebrated attunement to sense of time, purpose, and place. It is an opportunity to engage in thoughtful work comingled with true joy and celebration of life. It is a moment of participation in something “rich” (as Jeff would put it) that transcends any perfect day, any ethereal season, or even a whole life’s work.
Jeff gave—and still gives—freely of his friendship, knowledge, and passion to all of us “loon people” who ever spent any time trying to improve the nesting success of a Common Loon on a hydro reservoir. Each of us has embraced that energy at our own level and carried it with us into our own investigations of life. Some of us stayed with the loons for just a little while; some of us are still too inextricably enchanted to move on—too in love with pointy trees, bobbing driftwood, the smell of floating peat bogs, the color of thunderstorms approaching across a big lake, the gloss of a newly laid loon egg, and the soul-stirring sound of a part-bird-part-banshee howling through the night.
Jeff still comes “back east” when he can, though not as frequently now as all our seasons change. Even when he’s not with us physically, he’s always “there in spirit.” Like some others encountered across the decades, I can sense the comingling of science and the spirit world that Jeff perceives in the Elysium of Maine’s lakes. I try to speak Jeff’s language of seeing to the “new kids” – as full of ambition and potential as I was those years ago. I hope I speak it well enough to resonate. Moreover, I hope there will be those who can sense and embrace that spirit all on their own as Jeff does; the ones who do might choose to linger in these haunts for a while.
Taking Action for Nature
By Deborah McKew, Editor-in-Chief, BRI Publications
The natural world is a tapestry in which every thread is critical to the integrity of the whole.
In October of this year, under the theme Taking Action for Nature, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will convene in Armenia to continue what they started in 1992—developing and improving strategies for sustainable development.
For more than three decades, this United Nations entity has been promoting the concept that biological diversity “is about more than plants, animals, and microorganisms and their ecosystems—it is about people and our need for food security, medicines, fresh air and water, shelter, and a clean and healthy environment in which to live.”
On a parallel track, Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) has been working toward that same theme. For the past three decades, BRI has been “taking action for Nature” through its long-term wildlife tracking and monitoring studies. With its focus on mercury contamination, BRI became deeply involved in the work of the UN’s Minamata Convention on Mercury, building our Center for Mercury Studies into a global network of collaborative research and knowledge sharing. Continuing to expand its mission to address emerging threats to the environment, BRI developed the Center for Conservation and Climate Change and the Center for Research on Offshore Wind and the Environment.
Along the way, BRI’s path intersected with the CBD and another UN collaboration began. In early 2025, Mael Glon, Ph.D., joined BRI to launch its Biodiversity Research Program and develop biodiversity research and conservation projects in collaboration with international organizations such as the CBD, government agencies, and renowned biodiversity scientists.
As the world changes, and more attention is given to the wellbeing of our planet, the work of the CBD becomes more and more critical. And the research that BRI conducts, in the field and in the lab, helps strengthen the foundation for this global endeavor.
Photo Credits: Photos © BRI
