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Why do birds do what they do?

Over the course of a year—or even a single month—we see a notable variety of bird species pass through the Northeast. In just September and October, you could potentially see hundreds of different species in Massachusetts alone; from shorebirds big and small in mid-September, to warblers and thrushes in early October, to sparrows later in the fall. What causes all of these different birds to move at different times in a single migration season? What are these birds doing? What do they eat? How do they do it?? The answer to these questions, to put it simply, comes down to biology. Birds have a dazzling array of adaptations that allow them to live almost everywhere. Take, for example, the Chimney...

The Museum of Science, Boston and GMRI’s Future of Seafood

The Museum of Science, Boston and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (Portland, ME) are co-organizing this one-day, invitation-only conference with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Did you know that more than 90% of seafood is imported into the United States, and more than 70% is eaten in restaurants? More than 33% of fish and seafood is estimated to be lost to waste. The oceans and its wildlife are changing at an alarming rate and the Gulf of Maine is the "canary in the coal mine." Innovations and entrepreneurship are needed to change our broken food system, and seafood can play a major role in sustaining and nourishing the world. This conference features expert speakers and panelists who will lay out...

Connecting to the Arctic through technology

While our field work in the Arctic is over for this year, it doesn’t mean that the work is over. In fact, we are actively receiving data from our trip to the Canning River Delta and participating this week in the Arctic Refuge Virtual Festival of Birds. Our team on the Canning River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge put satellite transmitters on Semipalmated Sandpipers and Dunlin last year, and then used ‘tundra stealth’ to attempt to recapture the returning birds so we can collect their transmitters and learn vital secrets about where they have spent the past year. We also deployed new tracking tags on Pectoral Sandpipers and American Golden-Plovers. This collaborative project is led by Rick Lanctot from...

Don’t miss The Arctic Refuge Virtual Festival of Birds

In late September, Manomet will be joining with its partners, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Audubon Alaska, Friends of Alaska Wildlife Refuges and Manomet, to fete the world’s most remarkable athletes, navigators and survivalists: the thousands of birds that migrate annually to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Arctic Refuge Virtual Festival of Birds, held online from September 24-28, will take participants to a place few will ever visit in person – to the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge. Through videos, photos, live events, games, contests and other activities, festival “goers” will get an insider’s look at the short but incredibly productive summer season in the Arctic Refuge through the experiences of biologists, conservationists and the birds themselves....

Warming waters and migrating fish stocks could cause political conflict

Manomet's Marissa McMahan is quoted in this Seafood Source article by Aaron Orloski. "The Gulf of Maine is already experiencing major migrations. Lobster are moving towards Canada, cod are shifting deeper, and black sea bass are showing up north of Cape Cod. “The Gulf of Maine is really ground zero for mitigating and adapting to climate-induced change,” Marissa McMahan, a senior fisheries scientist at Manomet, a New England science nonprofit that works on environmental issues, including by partnering with fishermen, told SeafoodSource. "

Strengthening New England’s fisheries one bite at a time

To accomplish our goal of creating a more sustainable world, Manomet seeks to get more people to join in—to learn, to care, to take action. At our Future of Fishing seafood tasting last Thursday in Boston, we were able to bring together new and old friends to learn about—and taste—how we can strengthen the fisheries in the Gulf of Maine. From scientists to fishermen to chefs, many of the attendees at The Future of Fishing had a story to tell about how they were playing a part in sustaining this critical ecosystem. “This event proves that there are a lot of people who are looking to do the right thing going forward,” said Jared Auerbach, the CEO of Red’s Best...

Applying sustainability practices in the real world

Less than a mile from Manomet’s Brunswick, Maine, office, former U360 intern Kate Holcomb is working hard to open Canopy Farms, a 55-by-60-foot farm-to-table aquaponic greenhouse that will supply Chef Cara Stadler’s renowned Maine restaurants (Tao Yuan, Bao Bao, and Lio). The skills she learned from her U360 internship are helping this entrepreneurial University of Southern Maine MBA student bring this project to fruition. With a mission to ‘grow good food, create good jobs, and support sustainable year-round agriculture’ in Maine, Canopy Farms is expected to open in fall 2018. Holcomb and Stadler explain aquaponics as “the cultivation of an ecosystem. Fish and plants grow in a closed loop: the fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, and the plants...

Green Crab Summit Proceedings

Thank you to all of the attendees of the ‘Inaugural’ Green Crab Working Summit!  It was a successful event and we hope that you learned a lot! The proceedings for the event are now available or the presentations from the Green Crab Working Summit 2018 are available for download below; to view a list of attendees, please click here. The East Coast wave of the green crab invasion occurred 200 years ago and they have since firmly established themselves from New England to Prince Edward Island, Canada, wreaking ecological and economic havoc along the way. We are not the first to research and propose solutions to reign in these nuisance crustaceans, in fact some of the ideas and work being...

Saving horseshoe crabs…one company at a time

From the Lab: Good News for Horseshoe Crabs and Shorebirds The biggest news story from the Delaware Bay this year is not the high counts of Red Knots and good departure weights, although those are both very exciting and welcome pieces of news. The biggest (and also extremely welcome) news came on May 10th, just as horseshoe crab numbers were increasing on the beaches and before most birds had even arrived. Before we get to the good news, let’s take a step back and look at the horseshoe crab. Atlantic horseshoe crabs are found from Maine to Mexico, with three other species found in Asia. Formerly abundant, horseshoe crabs spawn from April to July, packed onto the beaches of inland...

Want to learn more about Manomet and what we do?

Have you been reading about the work that Manomet does and wishing that you could experience it for yourself? Well, you can! We’re wrapping up another great series of Manomet “In the Field” events, with just one trip left for this season. Our spring lineup has been jam-packed with fun, exciting, and rewarding events that have taken Manomet Members behind-the-scenes to experience our mission in action. The Spring 2018 “In the Field” series began at historic Mt. Auburn Cemetery for our annual Spring Warbler Extravaganza where Trevor Lloyd-Evans led our group around the beautiful, rolling terrain in search of migrant songbirds. We saw more than three dozen different species, including a Nashville Warbler, multiple Baltimore Orioles, and a beautiful Scarlet...