By Marianne Gousy-Leblanc, Ph.D. candidate at McGill University

In 2025, I started the year with a lot of science. I attended the Waterbird Society and Pacific Seabird Group joint meeting in San José, Costa Rica, from January 6 to 9. It was my second time going to this conference during my PhD, and I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about seabird research across the globe. This conference is graduate student-friendly, and many students, even undergrads, can give talks.

I started the conference by attending a genomic workshop, followed by a welcome night at the hotel. I reconnected with some collaborators and made some new connections. The next day, after a series of interesting talks on foraging behavior, seabird monitoring, translocation, and species identification, we had a night at the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica (National Museum of Costa Rica). We enjoyed some traditional Costa Rican music and entertainment while eating delicious local food.

The following day, I presented my talk in the huge plenary room, oof! It went well, even though it was stressful! It’s always fun to talk about Arctic seabirds in a tropical country. I presented the third chapter of my PhD, which looks at the complementarity of foraging behaviour of thick-billed murre breeding partners from the Coats Island colony (in Nunavut).

During this conference, I learned a lot about new methods and techniques for tracking seabirds and monitoring their foraging behavior. I also learned about some fascinating work on non-invasive ways to study foraging.

Finally, the conference was hosted in an amazing hotel, so between sessions, we could enjoy the pool or go birding. A motmot decided to hang out in the hotel area, so everyone tried to get a picture during the coffee breaks. What a great week of learning and making connections in an extraordinary environment!

About the author: Marianne is a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University, supervised by Dr. Kyle Elliott. Her project on thick-billed murres (co-supervised by Vicki Friesen, Queen’s University) will combine many of Marianne’s interests, such as genetics, foraging behaviour and mate preference. She has spent the last three summers studying thick-billed murres at the Coats Island colony in Nunavut. She did her M.Sc. degree at the Université de Moncton, where she worked on the population genetics of Snowy Owls.