Elena Bernier,

Thesis:

Diet, distribution, and abundance of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) in Humboldt Bay, CA

Bio: Elena has a B.S. from the University of Vermont in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology, and has since worked with a variety of different species and taxa. Her research interests lie in marine mammal and fisheries interactions, and how they change in response to anthropogenic impacts on coastal ecosystems. For her master's thesis, she will be studying the diet, distribution, and abundance of harbor seals prior to offshore wind energy development. To do so, she will use drone imagery to assess distribution and abundance, and identify prey species in scat using metabarcoding, supplemented by identifying and measuring the otoliths of fish species found in scat samples.