The High Arctic Gull Research Group team is constantly growing. Beyond a core group of full-time members, we are constantly taking advantage of opportunities to join forces with talented researchers from government agencies, universities, conservation groups and industry. We all share a passion for the Arctic and for birds. Learn more about us below.

Dr. Mark Mallory is a Canada Research Chair on Coastal Wetland Ecosystems, based at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.  He has been studying High Arctic gulls since 2000, and was the lead on building the Nasaruvaalik Island research station.  His work has been highly collaborative with most of the rest of the HAGRG members, investigating issues of breeding phenology, reproductive success, annual survival, movements and key habitat sites, and contaminants in many of these birds.

Dr. Iain Stenhouse is a Senior Science Director at the Biodiversity Research Institute. He has been studying Arctic gulls since 1998, when he began his doctoral research focused on the behaviour and ecology of Sabine’s Gulls breeding on Southampton Island. He completed post-doctoral studies on the conservation and management of Ivory Gulls in 2004. More recently, Iain collaborated with Danish researcher, Dr. Carsten Egevang, to track Sabine’s Gulls and Arctic Terns from a breeding colony in Northeast Greenland to their wintering grounds in the southern hemisphere.

Tim Sailor cut his teeth at Nasaruvaalik Island where he was invovled with a number of projects looking at the general biology of High Arctic gulls (Ross's and Sabine's), as well as common eiders. He is currently pursuing a B.Sc. at Waterloo University. 

Dr. Birgit Braune is a Research Scientist with Environment Canada whose primary interest is in environmental contaminants in the Arctic marine environment, and how those contaminants may affect seabirds, including High Arctic gulls. She has been involved with ongoing studies of birds at Seymour, Nasaruvaalik, and Prince Leopold Island.

Dana Kellett  is a Wildlife Technician with Environment Canada based in Saskatoon.  She has worked with Dr. Ray Alisauskas in the Queen Maud Gulf Migratory Bird Sanctuary since 1994 on the population and reproductive ecology of geese and sea ducks, and more recently, on the impacts of overabundant lesser snow and Ross's geese on arctic habitats and sympatric avian and small mammal communities.  She was fortunate to visit Nasaruvaalik Island in 2014, and looks forward to future collaboration with HAGRG.

Dr Tony Gaston worked on seabirds in Nunavut from 1975-2014, visiting most of the major seabird colonies and carrying out field studies of Thick-billed Murres, Northern Fulmars, Black-legged Kittiwakes and Glaucous Gulls. He was a joint editor of The Birds of Nunavut (2018) and of the Birds chapter for the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment. In his spare time he plays table tennis and listens to The Beatles.


Shanti Davis has been working in the Arctic for a decade, during which time she's been involved with numerous studies focused on the biology and ecology of birds. She studied tundra nesting seaducks in NWT while doing her B.Sc. at the University of Victoria, and then directed her attention to unravelling the life history and migration patterns of Sabine's gulls on Nasaruvaalik Island for her M.Sc. at Memorial University. 

Autumn-Lynn Harrison is a Research Scientist with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and Program Manager of the Migratory Connectivity Project. She holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Cruz with a focus on the ecology and conservation of migratory marine predators of the North Pacific. Together with many collaborators, she uses modern technology to contribute to an understanding of the full-life-cycle of understudied Arctic species.

Isabeau Pratte has spent the last three years studying birds that breed in the Arctic, especially seabirds and seaducks, notably at Nasaruvaalik Island and Prince Leopold Island. After a B.Sc. at the Université du Québec à Rimouski in 2012, she is working on an M.Sc. at Acadia University. Part of her research examines the interaction between common eiders and arctic terns that breed at Nasaruvaalik Island. "The Arctic  is a phenomenal region, always changing, never the same... It is a great opportunity to be able work in this area"

Brian Uher-Koch is a Wildlife Biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center specializing in Arctic waterbirds.  He completed an M.Sc. at Simon Fraser University studying the non-breeding ecology of sea ducks and its implications for conservation and management. His other research interests include population biology, demography, and community ecology.  His current work focuses on the responses of Arctic birds to a changing climate and the nesting ecology of a variety of species including yellow-billed loons and emperor geese in Alaska.

Nora Spencer has a B.Sc from Dalhousie University and a M.Sc. in Biology from Acadia University. She began working with passerines and transitioned to seabird conservation for her graduate work. Her master's thesis investigated the annual movements and critical winter habitat of the endangered ivory gull (Pagophila eburnea) in the Canadian High Arctic.  Nora's research interests include examining the spatial ecology and behaviour of animals in relation to their conservation.

Carina Gjerdrum is a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service of Environment Canada based out of Nova Scotia.  She coordinates the Pelagic Seabird Monitoring and Conservation Program for Atlantic Canada, which uses ships of opportunity to survey birds at sea.  Since 2007, she has been working with partners to put observers on vessels in the Arctic, collecting data to identify areas where seabirds may be at risk to human activities, and to monitor the impacts of climate change in the marine environment.

Mark Maftei has been studying birds in the Arctic since 2004, and focused on avian ecology during his B.Sc. at the University of Toronto and his M.Sc. at Memorial University. His main interests include migration biology and the ecology of Arctic breeding species. He has worked all over the circumpolar Arctic, but returns to Nasaruvaalik Island each summer to continue research on the diverse community of nesting species. He is a leading expert on Ross's gulls. 

Hailing from Hall Beach (Sanirajak) Jason Akearok started his career as a Seabird Technician with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Iqaluit,  completed an M.Sc. at the University of Victoria, returned to the CWS as a Habitat Biologist, and now w…

Hailing from Hall Beach (Sanirajak) Jason Akearok started his career as a Seabird Technician with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Iqaluit,  completed an M.Sc. at the University of Victoria, returned to the CWS as a Habitat Biologist, and now works for the Nunavut Wildlife Managment Board overseeing wildlife research in the territory. He has collaborated extensively conducting research on a variety of Arctic birds.

Callie graduated from Michigan State University in 2011 with a B.Sc. in Wildlife Biology and Management. She began working with birds as an undergraduate student and continues to today as a contract biologist. Her work studying birds has taken her to Wyoming, Minnesota, South Carolina, Idaho, Hawaii, South Dakota, Arizona, Madagascar, and multiple times to the Alaskan Arctic. 

Fabrice Genevois  studied ornithology at L’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) and did most of his research on the behavioural ecology of subantarcic petrels in the context of sexual selection.  He is also involved in field studies with French Museum of Natural History and also works as a lecturer on expedition ships in the polar regions.

Sarah Wong has been working with marine wildlife for nearly twenty years. Since 2007, she has been a  seabird observer for the Canadian Wildlife Service, conducting surveys offshore of Canada’s east coast and high Arctic. She is currently a W. Garfield Weston Postdoctoral Fellow for Northern Research at Acadia University, working with Mark Mallory and other collaborators at Canadian Wildlife Service and  Institute of Ocean Sciences, to identify factors driving marine hotspots for seabirds in the North America Arctic.

Scott Moorhouse is an environmental consultant and ornithologist with research interests focused on

large Larus gulls, raptors, and migration. His work has included an analysis of the feeding ecology and

behavior of breeding Iceland Gulls and comparisons with sympatric large Larus gulls at Kinngait, Baffin

Island, Canada; impacts of oil and gas development on breeding and migrating shorebirds, ducks, geese,

and other species at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska; hybridization in Glaucous and Herring Gulls at Prudhoe Bay;

impacts of oil and gas development on breeding seabirds on the Pribilof Islands, Alaska; nocturnal bird

migration in coastal central California and other locations; and raptors. His work on raptors has included

a study of urban nesting of Cooper’s Hawks in Colorado; migration counting at major concentration

areas such as Cape May, New Jersey and Duluth, Minnesota; long-term monitoring of breeding raptor

and Mountain Plover populations in short-grass prairie habitats in Colorado; and habitat use, and

feeding ecology and behavior of breeding Broad-winged Hawks in Ontario and Ohio.