Sarah was accepted into Hawai’i Pacific University in 2012 and has studied abroad in Panama (Fall 2013) and Tanzania (Spring 2014), where she worked on marine conservation projects. In Panama, her project was based on the overfishing of sharks along the Pacific Coast and how the creation of protected estuaries may help the recovery of shark populations. Her project in Tanzania was comparing crab and mangrove species diversity and abundance between mangrove forests and the salt farms within to determine the effect salt farms have on the native environment.
After returning to HPU the following semester, Sarah
acquired a job at the Pelagicos lab, which sparked
her new found love for seabirds. She began sorting
through diet samples of Red Footed Boobies. These
samples have become the foundation for her research
at HPU. She also volunteers performing necropsies
for the Marine Stranding Program at HPU as well as
an internship sorting the marine debris found within
two whale stomachs. Since discovering her love for
birds, she has also helped with various seabird projects
around the island. Sarah was accepted into the Concurrent
Masters' of Marine Science Program at HPU the Fall
of 2015 and graduated with a B.S. in Marine Biology
in May of 2016.
The focus of Sarah's research is to describe the foraging
ecology of Oahu’s Red Footed Boobies by quantifying
their diet and linking it to their movements, measured
using GPS loggers. More specifically, the goals of
this study are to: 1) describe the diet and feeding
behavior of the birds and compare it to a previous
study at the same colony (Ashmole & Ashmole 1967);
2) develop and implement standardized methods for
analyzing seabird diet samples; and 3) integrate the
diet and movement data to compare the behavior of
the birds during two years of different oceanographic
conditions (2014 & 2015).
Sarah presented her findings at the Pacific Seabird Group meeting, held in O'ahu in February 2016, and was awarded the runner up student presentation award for her poster entitled:
Diet of Red-footed Boobies Provisioning Chicks on
O'ahu
