|
   |
 |
|
Biography of Bill Fraser
PI Bill Fraser checks Giant Petrel nest. Ornithologist, and expert on skuas, gulls and penguins, and slated
as a live guest in program 1: LFA 2 also thanks Dr. Fraser for
his input to Activity 3.3, "From data to Death" Two questions that I am often asked are, when did my interest
in science start and what brought me to Antarctica to do research? The answer to the first question really has no time period attached
to it, as I cannot recall a time when I did not have an interest in science,
which in my case involves the field of ecology. I spent the first 12 years
of my life in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina but, either through
family or friends, was fortunate in having access to some of the great
"estancias" or ranches for which that country is known. It was
on those ranches that I developed a keen interest in the out-of-doors
and hunting and fishing in particular. I quickly realized that the key
to becoming better at those activities was simply to know more about the
species I pursued. Thus, whatever free time I had in those early years
was spent either reading about the natural world or pursuing fish and
game. Although I did not recognize it as such, I had, in effect, turned
to ecology to understand the animals in which I was interested. My formal education in ecology began in 1974, which also coincided with
my first trip to Antarctica. By that time, my family had moved to the
United States and I had finished high school and four years of college,
graduating from Utah State University with a degree in Wildlife Biology.
In Utah I also became more interested in research, and it was because
of this interest that I applied to do graduate work at the University
of Minnesota. The person that took me on as a graduate student was Dr.
David Parmelee, a world-class ornithologist who had specialized in Arctic
research but was then turning his interests to the Antarctic. I joined
David Parmelee's team in 1974 and one of the conditions I accepted as
part of the arrangement was that I was to spend at least two seasons in
Antarctica. Those two seasons eventually encompassed 17 months of field
research at Palmer Station, a U.S. base on the Antarctic Peninsula. David Parmelee gave his students a free hand in designing and developing
their own research programs, and I elected to study the foraging ecology
of Kelp Gulls, eventually receiving a PhD in Wildlife Ecology for that
effort. What brought me to Antarctica, therefore, was a bit of luck, combined
with a keen, long-term interest in wildlife and the environment. The 1996-1997 season represents my 22nd year in pursuit of these interests
and seabird ecology as the focus of my research, which now involves trying
to understand how variability in the marine (the feeding habitat) and
terrestrial (the breeding habitat) environments affect seabird populations
at various space and time scales. In effect, seabirds provide the clues
that allow me to understand ecosystem dynamics, their ecology serving
as a sort of "window" by which to view interactions between
the physical and biological components of the system.  | From The Field | Video
Information | Researcher Q & A |
|
||
|
|
|
