Cetacean Watch with Spotter Pro App and ORCAS!

Whilst we focus on researching the breeding elephant seals during the winter season, there are many other aspects to our daily data collection. One of which is looking for whales and dolphins from the lighthouse. We try to carry out at least two cetacean surveys a day, although this depends on weather conditions, especially sea

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Circle of Life

The Farallon Islands are a great place to observe wildlife. It’s a small piece of rock with a huge diversity and abundance of life, from the tiny Anna’s Humming bird to the giant Blue Whale. Even after a few months living here, I am still amazed by the daily spectacle. Examples of the diversity of

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Seeing changes through time with your own eyes

Russ Bradley, Farallon program manager here, out on the island to cover for winter biologist Ryan Berger on his break. It’s always a treat for me to come to the island in the winter – as most of my over 1550 days out here have been spent in the summertime. It’s a nice contrast from

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Water Harvesting & New Arrival!

In my opinion, life on SEFI is very rewarding and satisfying. Every day is busy – we work hard and have a variety of tasks to accomplish.  We may be a small community of people but we get along quite well. We make nearly all of our meals from scratch. Most of our waste is

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Winter Storms and Island Erosion

“You’ll smell it before you see it” I was told on board the Freda B while we sailed towards the South Farallon Islands. As we approached our soon to be home, the smell of the island drifted amongst us but all I could see was the thick wall of fog in front of me.  Suddenly,

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WELCOME TO THE WINTER SEASON 2014-15

We arrived to the island in Farallon Style this year with the wonderful contribution of Freda B, her lovely crew and skipper Paul Dines. Freda B came equipped with an onboard cook who spoiled us the entire way. Luckily the seas cooperated and no one was sea sick on the way out to the island.

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Happy Halloween from the Farallones

Perhaps you were wondering whether four biologists isolated from civilization on the Farallon Islands would take the time to celebrate Halloween. Well never fear, with a little face paint, we attempted to emulate our favorite warblers. Can you figure out which warbler species we were? * Hint: two of the warblers breed on the West

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23rd Annual Farallonathon

From September 19 to September 25, the fall crew conducted our annual fundraiser called the Farallonathon. Initiated in 1992 by then biologist Peter Pyle, the Farallonathon was created to recognize the truly unique elements of the Farallon Islands, while at the same time participating in Point Blue’s Annual Bird-A-Thon. This event is similar to a Bird-a-thon, except

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Early Fall Migration Summary and Highlights – Lots of Highlights!

The Fall Crew arrived on Southeast Farallon Island on 16 August to find two adult Blue-footed Boobies, an adult Brown Booby, and the continuing adult Northern Gannet, all on Sugarloaf and right above where we conducted the switchover with the Seabird Crew. Three species of birds from the family Sulidae at one location in California

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An island milestone

Recently on the island we celebrated Farallon Biologist Pete Warzybok’s 1800th night on South East Farallon Island. That’s nearly 5 years of Pete’s life spent living, sleeping and working on the island!  5 years on the island – long enough for Pete to have seen pretty much everything… To celebrate this momentous occasion, we managed

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