Since the 1960’s New York-based pelagic trips have evolved from “let’s go offshore to nowhere” to targeted strikes overlying sea surface temperature, wind, and chlorophyll charts in concert with our ever-increasing knowledge of seasonal bird movements. With each new trip unknowns are becoming knowns. Pelagic junkies Doug Gochfeld and Sean Sime will discuss the evolution of the exploration of New York’s offshore waters and how analyzing seabird data across the Atlantic has paid immediate dividends here at home.
Sean Sime is a professional photographer and trip leader and has lectured on the natural world. He has spent several summers banding Common Terns on Great Gull Island and has photographed their wintering grounds in South America.
Doug Gochfeld is a full-time trip leader crisscrossing the globe cultivating his interests in migration, vagrancy, and patterns of distribution. He has done extensive work studying the breeding and wintering ecology of Hudsonian Godwits in Alaska and Semipalmated Sandpipers in Suriname and Brazil.