Living on the Isles of Shoals, a network of islands off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine

The Shoals Marine Laboratory, a joint venture between the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University, manages the tern colony. three lone researchers live on White Island for the summer studying these gregarious birds that serve as harbingers of sea life in the Gulf of Maine.
The black-capped, orange-beaked terns can tell us a lot about the ocean, not just locally, but around the world. The terns' annual trip north is part of 60,000 global miles they fly each year, spending winters as far south as Argentina and Brazil. Masses of them find their way back to New England's coastline every summer, choosing to breed at places such as White Island and Massachusetts' Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge off Cape Cod, which sees the largest common tern population along the Atlantic seaboard.
Read more about the project and the terns on our website www.providencejournal.com/sto...