A select group of people are born knowing what career will drive them forward; others take a long, winding pathway to get to find what they truly love.
Ann Harding falls into the second category. Ask her about Little auks, and you had better have made a cup of tea, because you might find yourself in a long conversation focused on these incredible seabirds.
Ann Harding and one of her Little auks
Ann Harding and one of her little auks.
Childhood friends might be astounded to discover her on the cutting edge of seabird research, for as a child she wouldn’t sit still long enough to complete her schoolwork. Adolescence was spent as a tomboy; collecting scraps of bone and scouring the British countryside for some of nature’s secrets. Academics study was not a priority. The British university system requires solid high school scores in three A level courses, so three were minimally attempted. Ann dropped out of one, and failed the others, and so, a university future was not an option. She dutifully enrolled in a technical college to receive certification in countryside management, but instead spent the next five years working on a range of wilderness, conservation and research projects.
As a teenager full of uncertainty, her post high school experiences included a youth expedition to Spitsbergen, an apprenticeship with a taxidermist in Sweden, and working on seabird monitoring projects in Scotland and Wales. After a conservation internship in Great Britain she was hired to work for a small dog-sledding company in Spitsbergen for a year. This was where a lifelong love of the Arctic began. Several more short term internship positions followed, including more time on Skomer Island (a renowned seabird colony in Wales). With a deepening interest in marine ecology Ann sought out volunteer positions, and moved to Alaska in 2003 to work as a volunteer for John Piatt at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). After a season collecting puffin diet samples out in the Aleutians, Ann continued working with John on a 7-year project examining the response of Murres and Kittiwakes to varying food availability. This project involved a comparison of three colonies with different oceanographic conditions. Ann led the seabird field work on one of these colonies (Duck Island—a small, 2.4 hectare, island in Cook Inlet). The independence and self reliance developed through isolated research led to the realization that fundamental background knowledge was required. Only with a strong university background could she put the research pieces together into solid understanding and conclusions. With that, Ann began a period of summer Alaskan research and fall/ winter and spring university coursework back in England. After a bachelor’s degree in Zoology was achieved, the data she had collected on Horned puffins living on Duck Island formulated the backbone of a masters degree.
Conducting research in Alaska as a citizen of Great Britain has led to some difficulties. Many professional jobs are unavailable to Ann as a non citizen. It has also led to more skillful writing opportunities, as grant awards became the primary way to fund her research. Work that began on Cook Inlet in 1995 continues today, although the funding for analysis and writing is minimal. Ann now works as a research associate for Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, and she continues to be involved in collaborative seabird studies with USGS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Ann began studying Little Auks in 2001, working with Nina Karnovsky of Pomona College, in Hornsund, Spitsbergen. After 2 field seasons in Spitsbergen, and a reconnaissance to East Greenland with the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in 2004, she began a three year project at Kap Hoegh. The project is built on collaboration, with David Gremillet and Ann receiving funds from the French Polar Institute for logistics, and Nina Karnovsky and Ann receiving a National Science Foundation grant for the 2007 comparison of the Greenland and Hornsund colonies. Simultaneous Spitsbergen projects by Geir Gabrielsen and Jorg Welcker (Norwegian Polar Institute) have allowed a tremendous opportunity for a four- colony comparison on Little Auks breeding a highly contrasting oceanographic conditions.
Partly because of the indirect path Ann took to higher education, she is deeply committed to involving school children and young adults in seabird research and understanding. She hopes to give the school children in Ittoqqortoormiit opportunities to stimulate an interest in learning more about the ecology of Little Auks. The future of some of these isolated villages in Greenland may depend on developing programs that support and direct the types of research that are beginning in this and other polar communities. The single most important item Ann wants to convey, that has been learned over time, is that "if you want to do something, you CAN do it. If you sincerely work to achieve something, people will know it, and they will help you. If you have a driving question, look for the answer, don’t stop.”
When questioned about why study Little auks, a moment of thoughtful consideration transpired before she responded. With a love of seabirds has come the realization that there are many fundamental unknowns about several seabird species. With Little auks specifically, there is so little known and so much to find out. Ann’s curiosity is especially profound surrounding parental behaviors and parental decisions in this species. For example, both parents alternate care in brooding. After the chicks are born, parents seem to share in feeding responsibilities of the chick. It is not known if that is done equally. It is known that the female parent departs from the nest during late chick rearing, leaving the male to complete chick rearing and escort the fledgling to sea. Her research is looking at what energy reserves each parent has at different stages in the breeding season, how stress levels change between each sex, and if males and females have a different flexibility or willingness to increase their effort in raising their chick. The larger question is examining how flexible this species might be as ocean current s change, offering different food supplies than may be available now. From what is initially being compiled this week from the first 48 hour continuous observation it also appears that a tremendous amount of energy is used circling the nest area to avoid predators. One of these parents was observed being flushed by hunting gulls 17 times within 1 hour 35 minutes. It appears that these birds are constantly on alert, expending a considerable amount of energy, and therefore calories, constantly rising up to avoid predators.
Fall and winter will be used to compile and analyze data between each of the colonies. Time will be shuttled between Alaska and Norway in close communication with her team as they try to resolve some of the collective questions they have and some of the individual ones each member is also trying to answer.