Location: Carlton Plaza 3800 Walnut Avenue, Fremont 94538
Presenter: Peter Pyle

The Gulf of the Farallones lies within an "Eastern Boundary Current System," one of five such current systems around the world, where cold ocean currents and other environmental factors lead to high ocean productivity; an estimated 85-95% of the world's seafood originates from these five systems.

Peter's talk will cover the ecology and conservation of the Gulf's marine vertebrates, from birds to pinnipeds to cetaceans, with emphasis on his main research species, breeding and pelagic seabirds, and great white sharks. We will not only learn about some of the Gulf's keystone species, but will look in on the excellent research that has been undertaken in the Gulf and the conservation and management actions that have resulted.

Peter Pyle is an ornithologist and marine biologist. During the late 1970s and early 1980s he partook in the Hawaii, Micronesia, and Samoa Forest Bird Surveys. From the early 1980s through the early 2000s much of his research was conducted on birds and white sharks at the Farallon Islands, California. He has developed a special interest in bird molt and how it can be used to age birds, and has published many papers and taught many workshops on this subject in North and Latin America. Among bird banders, he is best known for his Identification Guides summarizing molt, ageing, and sexing information for North American birds in the hand. He is a Research Associate both at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, and the B.P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu. To date, he has authored over 120 papers in scientific journals and three books, and has been a co-author on over 70 additional scientific papers and an on-line monograph on the birds of Hawaii. He currently works for the Institute for Bird Populations in Point Reyes Station, California.