There was much more drifting arctic ice near the coast that in the past few years, even though the total amount of ice in the arctic continues to decline. We take care to avoid all the drifting ice in our small rubber boat!
I am happy to report that we are safely back to Kaktovik, the small town on the Beaufort Sea where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains a bunkhouse we use as a staging point for our coastal survey. We successfully completed our survey along all 138 miles of the Arctic Refuge coastline! It is always a relief to finish the survey safely, since the weather and boating conditions can be extremely challenging.
Since my last podcast, we have finished the last two river Deltas, including the Jago, which is one of the largest. At most of the river deltas, the mudflats were largely underwater due to the very high sea levels caused by wind driven tides. At the Jago, where the mudflat is very wide, there was still a large area of mudflat exposed, and the birds had congregated there in even larger numbers than usual. We saw thousands of Semipalmated Sandpipers, and hundreds of birds of many other species, including Dunlin, Pectoral Sandpipers, and Stilt Sandpipers. There were also quite a few rarer species, including White-rumped Sandpipers, Western Sandpipiers, Sanderling, Black-bellied Plovers, and American Golden-Plovers. It was a delight to see so many birds finding a reliable source of food as they prepare for their epic southward migrations. This adds evidence to what our data had showed in the past several years, that a few of the large river deltas like the Jago are extremely important staging areas. We will be working hard in the coming months to analyze all of the data from the survey, and are hoping to publish the first paper ever to compare survey results from the entire coastline over multiple years, which will help determine which are the most important areas to conserve for staging shorebirds.
As we spend the next several days scraping off the river delta mud, cleaning and packing up our gear, and preparing for our own long trip southwards, our thoughts are already looking ahead to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Shiloh Schulte, who leads our conservation effort on American Oystercatchers, has also been leading the development of an ambitious proposal to conduct surveys on the impacts of the spill on the many different shorebird species that will soon be arriving in the Gulf. We expect this effort will take much of the time of our shorebird science crew over the next several months, as we work to help measure the impacts of the spill on migrating birds.
We are extremely grateful to all of our supporters, whose generosity makes this work possible. Every time we use a piece of safety gear or survey equipment, we appreciate so much how your generosity makes it possible for us to work here. Thank you again for all your support, which has made this successful season in the Arctic possible!
Red-necked Phalarope female Swimming
Semipalmated Sandpiper
At the start of our first survey, on 
Here are the caribou from up close, they were quite curious to see who was visiting their river delta!
This is how we dress for our long crossings on the arctic ocean, and even with all those layers it still gets bone-chilling by the time we arrive.
This is a typical campsite on the survey, where we carry our gear ashore and camp along the edge of the ocean. Our second and third day of surveying were in the rain, so crawling into your tent is a welcome relief at the end of a long day!
Here is the view from our Canning River camp, looking across the mudflat we will survey for staging shorebirds, with the arctic ice in the distance. Despite abundant ice in this area this year, June was a record low for ice extent across the entire arctic.
