Marine Bird Program

Marine birds are valuable bioindicators and play an increasingly important role in assessments of ecosystem health. We use innovative methods to survey marine birds, track their movements, model their distributions, identify trends, and predict responses to known and emerging threats at sea.

Program Lead: Iain Stenhouse, Ph.D.

Capabilities

Surveys & population monitoring: BRI employs a series of traditional and innovative survey techniques, both observational and remote, to gather reliable data on the abundance and distribution of marine birds at sea.
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Behavioral studies: Observing the interactions of marine birds with offshore wind turbines, we can advance our understanding of avoidance behaviors and improve risk assessments.


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Tracking & movements: Our team has a vast wealth of experience in tracking the local movements and long-distance migrations of marine birds, identifying hotspots of consistent use, and contributing critical data for marine spatial planning.

Contaminants: Sampling marine birds at different life stages allows BRI to evaluate their exposure to a suite of environmental contaminants, and identify spatial patterns and temporal trends in the marine environment.

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Featured Project

Project WOW: Wildlife and Offshore Wind

Project WOW is a highly collaborative research project involving many partners. BRI is leading project efforts to assess the movements, behavior, and habitat use of Northern Gannets at various stages of offshore wind development, to identify how they respond to development over space and time.

Projects and Products

Digital Aerial Surveys in the Gulf of Maine – The Gulf of Maine is home to a great many marine bird species throughout the year, yet there are considerable spatiotemporal gaps in our knowledge of their offshore distributions. We carried out a series of digital aerial surveys of marine birds and other wildlife in the region, which were used to model their seasonal distributions and inform marine spatial planning efforts. With increasing interest in offshore wind energy development in the region, particularly floating turbines, survey data of this kind is critical for planning, siting, and permitting processes. Survey data can be explored here.

Northern Gannet, photo credit jacme31/Flickr

Tracking Marine Birds on the Atlantic coast – Working alongside collaborators, BRI staff have been involved in several studies tracking the movements of marine birds in the Northwest Atlantic, especially tracking of Northern Gannets captured in waters off mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states. Research and follow up analysis has focused on the movements and habitat use of marine birds in relation to existing and planned offshore wind developments along the Atlantic coast. Using high-resolution satellite and GPS tags provides accurate data on movement patterns and long-distance migrations at sea.

Standardized Data Collection – Standardizing offshore survey data collection and entry is critical in providing marine spatial planners with timely and meaningful marine bird distributions. With funding from BOEM, we developed an intuitive, customizable app called SeaScribe for tablets that collects georeferenced offshore wildlife survey effort and observation data, as well as associated environmental conditions and behavioral information for each entry. This app greatly improves standardization and workflow, reduces errors, and decreases time from raw data output to a finalized dataset suitable for analysis. SeaScribe is freely available for download on Google Play and the App Store.


Marine Bird Program Staff

News and Publications

Recent Publications

  • Ferguson, M.C., Adams, E.A., McElroy, M.E., Stenhouse, I.J., Gilbert, A.T., Winship, A.J. & Williams, K.A. 2026. Comparing local and regional density models for marine birds in the Gulf of Maine. Marine Ornithology 54(2): 241–258.
  • Boertmann, D. & Stenhouse, I.J. 2025. A Red-throated Diver tracked from the US Atlantic coast to northwest Greenland. Dansk Ornitologisk Forenings Tidsskrift 119: 116–118.