SGER: Salvage of Valdez Bird Specimens

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This SGER will support the urgent salvage of approximately 3000 rare and valuable bird carcasses recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The birds, stored in four enormous freezer vans, have been held as evidence in legal proceedings by the U.S. District Court for Alaska since 1989, but are now scheduled to be destroyed on or before September 30, 1992. Two basic reasons to salvage the Valdez birds are: (1) to complement the world's holdings of rare specimens; and (2) to provide rare material for important research on avian biology. The Valdez seabirds represent a Spring sampling, whereas most seabird holdings in museums are Summer/Fall. Further, 11 species of seabirds in the Valdez collection are represented by fewer than 100 skeletons in the world's collections, and four of the species are listed as either endangered or threatened. Other species that the PI will salvage can no longer be collected in large numbers to study morphological variation. Research projects made possible by the salvage collection include the study and recognition of new species (Red-faced and Pelagic Cormorants), the ecology of seabird molt, the origin (which breeding colony) of winter and early spring seabirds along the western coast, and growth patterns in seabirds. These specific studies will be cross-disciplinary, involving ecology, molecular and morphological systematics, population biology, and physiological ecology, and will enable a better understanding of avian systematics, breeding ecology and conservation biology.