1 FRIENDS OF THE ELEPHANT SEAL MINUTES FOR BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING – August 21, 2019 CAVALIER PLAZA Mission: Friends of the Elephant Seal is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about Elephant Seals and other marine life and to teaching stewardship for the ocean off the central coast of California. THE FES BOARD OF DIRECTOR’S MEETING WAS CALLED TO ORDER AT: 1:00PM by FES President Bridwell. DIRECTORS PRESENT: Bridwell, Arnold, O’Bannon, King, Fowles, Beck and Curtis. Kneeland was excused from attending this meeting. STAFF PRESENT: Wendy Sheridan. APPROVAL OF July 17, 2019 BOD MEETING MINUTES: ! Motion to approve the FES Board meeting minutes of July 17, 2019. / King / Fowles / Unanimous COOPERATING GROUP LIASION REPRESENTATIVES AND GUESTS PRESENT: Eric Hjelstrom, CSP Supervisor III, Rob Schneider, State Park Ranger, Nick Chase, State Park Ranger, Bette Bardeen, FES Docent and Mary Forbes FES Docent. BETTE BARDEEN’S REPORT TO THE BOARD: • Bette Bardeen reported on the newly formed FES committee for the purpose of developing a plan for the winter birthing season spread of elephant seals to W.R. Hearst Memorial State Beach and Arroyo Laguna Beach. Bette Bardeen will be the chair of this committee. The first committee meeting was on Monday (8/19/19). Bardeen noted that we don’t have a lot of time to get a plan in place, but said that can be a good thing. The FES role is to do interpretation work. FES wants to be involved wherever there are Piedras Blancas Rookery elephant seals. For the winter birthing season, we will probably staff W.R. Hearst Memorial State Beach and Arroyo Laguna Beach on weekends and holidays. Bardeen stated that we hope to have two people at each location but she noted that would require having many volunteers. We will try to recruit people who might work during the week but have some free time on the weekends. We may also use interns. It will be necessary to figure out how to make this an attractive assignment. It will probably be a one-day training followed by mentoring sessions. The FES mentors will need some retraining since there will be more of a focus on wildlife disturbances and human safety at these locations. We might not interview applicants. FES would like to do a press release through State Parks. There is a need to come up with a name for this group of volunteers. Ideally the name would include FES and winter. The committee is scheduled to meet again in two weeks. Hjelstrom said that State Parks can help with publicity and that Robyn Chase is ready to work with FES on training. The volunteers will need to be State Park Volunteers. Hjelstrom plans to meet with Bardeen on Monday to review how State Parks and FES can work together on this project. He noted that State Parks looks to FES as State Park’s elephant seal interpretation team. There was a brief discussion about what would be the best uniform for those working at W.R. Hearst Memorial S.B. and Arroyo Laguna. Should they wear State Park volunteer uniforms or the blue clothing of a FES docent? Hjelstrom noted that having addition interpretive signage at W.R. Hearst Memorial S.B. seems to be
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The Citizen Science team reported 21 tag or mark resights in July, 2019. Of these, 18 included full or partial tag or mark reports. Several were resights of the same marked adult male seals on successive days, in different locations. This reflects an increasing rate of success in tag/mark reports, reflecting over 85% success in individual seal identification.
2. Keith Mueller- Resight Data Base Many thanks to Keith Mueller for his on-going efforts to keep the resight database current. He has revised the current log sheet to assist docents to consistently use a standard format for data entry in each column.
3. Be On the Lookout for more instrumented seals (search concluded)
The efforts to locate the missing instrumented seals have now concluded. Leo DeWinter completed one additional radio survey on August 4, 2019. No radio signals were located.
4. William J. Goodger Memorial Internship program The 2019 program evaluation has been completed. Tyler Peck-Burnett and Abrielle Goodwein met all the objectives of the program and appreciated the opportunities to become FES docents, participate in FES activities, assist with Cal Poly research activities as well as work in marine mammal stranding response and animal care at The Marine Mammal Center.
5. Wildlife Disturbance Conference November 4, 2019
An abstract about the observations of wildlife disturbances and human safety issues during the 2019 season at William R. Hearst Memorial State Beach has been submitted in response to a Call for Abstracts for the Wildlife Disturbance Conference on November 4, 2019 at the William Penn Mott Jr. Training Center in Asilomar. Authors are Kathleen Curtis, Abrielle Goodwein and Tyler Peck-Burnett.
Submitted by Kathleen Curtis Aug 16, 2019
FES Board Meeting July 17, 2019
Communications Committee Report 1. Goals:
Goals in the last month have been to: (A) continue to develop our user base on social media accounts (B) edit and produce the Summer Edition of Among Friends. (C) receive bids from vendors for the website revision
The status toward these first steps:
A. Social Media accounts Facebook: The top post in July (Still photos of a molting adult male elephant seal on July 16) reached 12,700 people. Next highest were other photographs of adult male proboscis on July 25 (1928 people reached) Total page likes: 3903. Followers: 4039. Twitter: On hold Instagram: Not established yet
B. Website Revision:
Three vendors responded to the RFP for website revision. Review of the proposals was completed on August 9, 2019 with invited presentations scheduled in September, 2019.
C. The Summer Edition of Among Friends is in press and should be mailed soon.
A graphic designer created a new look and feel for the newsletter. 3. Among Friends deadlines The schedule for the member newsletter, Among Friends, for the remainder of 2019 follows:
2019 WINTER EDITION Planning Meeting - week of September 16, 2019 Copy Due - November 4, 2019 Print - November 18, 2019 Mail - December 2, 2019
4. E-seal News (Bluff Newsletter) in revision E-Seal News, the bluff newsletter is being reviewed and revised for the next printing. In response to the high number of English as a second-language speakers and students who visit the Piedras Blancas rookery, the revision will simplify the reading level of the written text. These revisions will insure that more visitors will be able to read and understand the information in this free newsletter.
5. Terminology Confusion
I revised
a. Trip Advisor listing. Elephant Seal Rookery- added written content but map location is still at Arroyo del Corral, as it requires a street address.
b. Inspirock.com has an accurate description and location! Will keep working on it: Elephant Seal Viewing Area (preferred) Piedras Blancas Rookery (visitsansimeonca.com) Map points to gift shop Elephant Seal Vista Point (SLO-Cal) (Map is accurate) Vista Point (multiple signs on Highway1, pointing to various areas) Friends of the Elephant Seal (SLO-Cal) Friends of the Elephant Seal ( 3 or 4 separate duplicate Yelp sites)
*Maps points to Visitor Center location and to Arroyo del Corral) Elephant Seal Docent Talks (SLO-Cal) Elephant Seal Rookery (Trip Advisor duplicate site)
*Map location points to Arroyo del Corral and Arroyo Laguna locations Cambria-Elephant Seals (Trip Advisor duplicate site) Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery (californiabeaches.com)- map location close (in
dunes) 35.661870, -121.255540 Piedras Blancas SMR & SMCA, Cambria SMP and White Rock (Cambria) SMCA (State
Parks) -map locations are in the ocean California State Parks (Search for elephant seals on the state parks site mostly finds Año
Nuevo information) Information (especially population size) is outdated on many sites. Submitted by Kathleen Curtis Aug 16, 2019
Aug 18, 2021
FES Board Meeting August 17, 2019
Training Activity Report
• Current Activity: o Fall 2018 Class Peer Review in final process o Training/Mentoring follow-up o Review plan for fall training o Nine pending docents for Fall 2019 Training
• Julie Ann White • Beverly Kurtz • Amy Handle • Steven MacGregor (fast track) • Ella Ver • Karen Graves • Laura “Raeann” Haggard • Robyn Case • New Interpreter
Winter Disturbance Training
• Terry Sullivan, West Linn, OR (Lives in SLO winter)
• Upcoming Activity: o FES Fall Training Dates - September 21 – Fall Basic Training
! Three mentoring sessions between Sep 21 and Oct 19 ! Peer review @ four months – Feb/March
o October 5 – Advanced Training 1 o October 19 – Advance Training 2
Work continues on the now combined data bases for both post presentation reporting and our target list. I have one more training session for myself to make sure I know how to use it all and to make final fine tuning on the setup. I can tell you already, it will make a HUGE difference in the ease in booking for the future. By years end, I should be able to cut my current 40-50 hours a month working on this project to about half of that.
We are on course to meet all goals for the Speaker Bureau set by me last December when presenting to the Board.
I am now back to booking. July we did not have any bookings but we have completed one this month but have a total of 9 on the books for the rest of August and September, October and November to date.
All is well. I would like to request being on the board agenda for November this year to give my annual report as I plan to be traveling in December.
Thanks for all you supporting my efforts in this process. Especially Tim who has been a magician at making some of my obstacles disappear. Thanks again.
B. Misty Wycoff, Administrator,Friends of the Elephant Seal775 [email protected]
We have several more pairs of docents sharing taking the table out so on the days the table goes outto the bluff it stays out longer.I retrained a docent this month who is returning after medical leave and she has scheduled multipletable dates. The price/tally sheet has been updated to reflect current pricing and availability of items.I am currently working on getting full coverage on the table over the Labor Day weekend.