Not Just a Flight of Fancy
Corey Clatterbuck ’08 As a graduate student in biology at San Jose State University, Corey Clatterbuck ’08 had the opportunity to accompany her advisor to Laysan Island and Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, where they used GPS and GLS devices to track movements of breeding Laysan albatrosses. Clatterbuck found that experience typical of most field research. During a three-week period, they endured: Bathing in ocean water Ant infestations in their tents Basic equipment maintenance, such as on a propane hose needed to warm food A tsunami warning that prompted a middle-of-the-night evacuation to the highest point on the island Emergency evacuation of a sick team member, whose care while on the island required that Clatterbuck give her daily shots using medical supplies dropped by the Coast Guard And Clatterbuck can’t get enough of it. She is now a Ph.D. candidate at San Diego State University, and before she entered graduate school, she accepted research jobs that took her from Alaska to the islands off the coast of Washington state. She studied the behavior of salmon in the Alaskan interior and the geographic distribution of the marbled murrelet, “a federally threatened and charismatic little seabird that poses all sorts of interesting wildlife management decisions.” “This research lets me mix my love of developmental and behavioral biology—classes I took at Transylvania—while expanding on questions of ecological conservation,” explains Clatterbuck. When Clatterbuck graduated from Transylvania, she first headed to Seattle to work
