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If the weather is too severe to take a boat to Castle Rock, Golightly partners with the U.S. Coast Guard to travel by helicopter.
Microphones pipe audio to the mainland so students
can eavesdrop on the activities of species
that feed at night (check it out: http://tinyurl.
com/watchseabirds).
Twice a year, Golightly ferries student researchers
to Castle Rock to perform maintenance on the
cameras. A skilled Zodiac pilot, Golightly drives his
boat to within a foot of the island and, as the craft
rises on a wave swell, passengers leap onto the
rocks. “Driving a Zodiac is tricky and Rick is one
of the few people who does it well,” says U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service biologist Gerry McChesney.
“You don’t want to bang against the rocks because
these boats are inflatable and can pop.”
Golightly occasionally has others drive so he
can go onto the island. During one such visit,
Golightly leaped from the boat but missed. “He
short-stepped the landing and ended up in
the drink,” Nelson says with a chuckle. “It didn’t
faze him.”
The Castle Rock project was inspired by a seabird
restoration Golightly assisted with on Devil’s
Slide, south of San Francisco. The island’s common
murre colony had been wiped out by gill net
fishing and an oil spill. Researchers wanted to
revive the colony, but murres are highly social
and will only nest if others of their kind are
present. So Golightly, McChesney and colleagues
used wooden murre decoys, mirrors and audio
players that broadcast common murre calls to fool
the birds into returning.
Golightly’s latest seabird project is even more ambitious.
Last summer, he and renowned HSU redwood
expert Steve Sillett hoisted a camera up to a
marbled murrelet nest in the redwood canopy –
270 feet aboveground. The camera has provided
never-before-seen images of the birds. Murrelets
are challenging to study because they fly at
speeds over 50 miles per hour, spend much of their
lives at sea and nest far above the eyes of researchers.
“It’s not an easy bird to get your hands on,”
Golightly says.
Watch real-time video of seabirds at Castle
Rock: http://tinyurl.com/watchseabirds
(The video stream will be live as soon as weather allows Golightly to
make the ocean crossing to place the cameras.)
To find the nest, Golightly and colleagues
traveled offshore at night to net murrelets. They
outfitted the birds with transmitters and used
electronic receivers to track the little black speeding
bullets back to their nests. Kitchen credits
Golightly with pioneering many of these
techniques. “In terms of using equipment and
technology he is a cut above.”
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HUMBOLDT MAGAZINE | Spring 2010