• Brian Allman

    Brian Allman
    DePauw University
    Studied California sea lions and Northern Fur seals on San Miguel Island, part of Channel Islands National Park, off the southern coast of California.

    From June to August of 2010, I had the unique opportunity to work as the intern for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center California sea lion internship.  I worked with NOAA researchers in the field of pinniped (seal and sea lion) biology on San Miguel Island, California, a nearly deserted island, where I assisted with field studies on animals I’d never in my life seen outside of a top of the line aquarium.

    San Miguel Island is a very unusual place to both live and work.  The house where the researchers live is atop the island on a bluff several hundred feet above the beach populated with thousands of California sea lions and northern fur seals.  To get to work each day requires hiking of varying difficulty, perhaps down the face of a dune or along a cliff edge.  While this was at times tiring or nerve-wracking, the opportunity to spend my days in a nearly pristine natural environment outweighed most of my concerns about the difficulty of the terrain.  For me, pinniped research at San Miguel Island was a tradeoff between the difficult hiking and climbing and the majesty and beauty of the island.  Despite its location in southern California, the island is never too hot, nearly always windy, and often foggier than any place I’ve ever been.  Truly San Miguel is a strange mix of incredible excitement and fun as well as difficult work and effort.

    The experience of working on pinnipeds on San Miguel Island included a variety of tasks. I spent weeks trekking around the island using a spotting scope or binoculars to resight branded California sea lions

  • Brian and Sharon resighting sea lions.


    and tagged northern fur seals for survival and reproductive studies, while also having the opportunity to help catch young pups, tag them, and collect genetic material from them for a paternity study. These experiences are not something any other internship I know of offers. I also documented female sea lion behavior, keeping track of their foraging trips and nursing visits, and conducted daily censuses of pup births, territorial males and females in a study area. These activities were great fun and enormously educational. This was occasionally offset by unpleasant tasks, such as mortality surveys where we counted over a thousand dead pups and classified the condition of the carcass and then dragged them up the beach and stacked them into piles to avoid recounting them on subsequent surveys.

    After nine weeks in the field, I spent 5 days at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory where I summarized the data I collected in the field and prepared a presentation for the AFSC. Through the field and laboratory experience, the internship broadened my scientific knowledge, as well as taught me an enormous breadth of field biology skills. The San Miguel experience taught me a great deal about skills crucial to a professional career in the field.

    The work on San Miguel offers a great reward for those who experience it, but takes strong fortitude as well. Nothing on the island is simple or easy.

  • Brian reading tags in the mobile blind.


    That said there is also never a day without something fun, exciting, or new. While on the island I saw six different species of pinnipeds, five species of cetacean, dozens of species of birds, and had several encounters with the endangered Island fox.

    In short, the San Miguel Island internship might not be for everyone. If, though, you possess a passion for nature and enjoy hiking and field biology, San Miguel is a great place to learn. Each day has a new task, new adventure, and new opportunity ready to pounce upon you. This internship experience was without a doubt the most intense experience I’ve had, but if you’re up to the challenge, the rewards are great.