LIFE IP AZORES NATURA | Attempted field work on Vila Islet, Santa Maria

March 5, 2021

Within the frame of the LIFE IP AZORES NATURA project, the SPEA team travelled to Santa Maria with the aim of continuing to monitor sea birds on Vila Islet as part of actions C6.1 “Habitat restoration for sea birds on islets” and D5.1 “Monitoring of terrestrial habitats, species and conservation problems”.

From the 25th to the 28th of February the SPEA team was on Santa Maria, hoping to be able to access Vila Islet in order to carry out the following tasks in collaboration with the Island Natural Park:

- Monitoring of the nests of band-rumped storm-petrel (Hydrobates castro) and Audubon’s shearwater (Puffinus lhermieri)
- Conducting passive acoustic monitoring
- Replacement of the autonomous recording unit (for species detection)
- Marking the nests to speed up and facilitate monitoring
- Installation of motion sensor cameras to assess nest predation events.

However, this time the reality of sea conditions did not allow access to the islet, not even by swimming, as the members of this brave team usually do when the undulation is too strong for the boat to approach the coast.

Here follows the link to a report filmed by the TV channel SIC in September 2020, when the team from SPEA and the Regional Directorate for Environment and Climate Change accessed the island under unfavourable conditions: https://sicnoticias.pt/pais/2020-09-19-Som-das-aves-estudado-nos-Acores.