Harold Reginald Carter III, 1956–2017

Harold (Harry) Reginald Carter III, Elective Member of the American Ornithological Society (AOS) since 2009, died on April 30, 2017, in Victoria, BC, at the age of 61. Harry dedicated his professional life of more than 40 years to the study and conservation of seabirds from Alaska to Mexico. In addition, he worked with ornithologists in Japan for more than 20 years to further conservation initiatives on seabirds, focused primarily on the endangered Japanese Crested Murrelet. Harry was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Harold R. and Anne (McMillan) Carter II during his father’s medical residency, but the family returned to Victoria where he received his early schooling. His passion for the outdoors and the seabirds on his doorstep had taken hold by the time he enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Victoria. After cleaning skeletons for a summer at the British Columbia Provincial Museum (BCPM), Harry realized his interest lay in fieldwork, from which he never wavered. Transferring to the zoology program at the University of British Columbia brought him into contact with Ian McTaggart Cowan, under whom he compiled data on seabird colonies used in the upcoming Birds of British Columbia project. A year before completing his BSc in 1978, Harry joined a team at the BCPM to continue surveys of colonies on the outer coasts of Haida Gwaii, piloting his father’s converted fishing boat. Harry’s legendary skills as a boat operator—especially zodiacs—benefited myriad seabird projects and awed his collaborators throughout his career. Our long-term association began at the Bamfield Marine Station in 1976, during a seabird course in which Harry was enrolled. Harry enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Manitoba in 1979. He undertook one of the first at-sea studies of the Marbled Murrelet, conducted in Barkley Sound, BC, and his thesis titled “At-sea biology of the Marbled Murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus)” was completed in 1984. Publications that resulted focused on foraging behavior and dispersion, and on gill-net mortality, the latter topic being among the first attempts to quantify seabird by-catch resulting from fishing activities in British Columbia. The original transects, repeated in June 1982, provided the basis for a paper, “At-sea distribution and nesting habitat of the Marbled Murrelet in British Columbia: Problems in the conservation of a solitarily nesting seabird,” originally presented at a meeting of the International Council for Bird Preservation at Cambridge University and published in 1984. Work on this species—soon designated as endangered—occupied much of Harry’s efforts in the years that followed as he worked with many colleagues to increase knowledge of its status and biology, and to assess impacts of oil spills, commercial fishing and logging of oldgrowth forests. Harry mapped museum records and at-sea observations of Marbled Murrelets along the West Coast that showed the birds were concentrated adjacent to remnant patches of old-growth forest, habitat in which the species was confirmed to nest. In 1983, Harry took a position with Point Reyes Bird Observatory and spent 4–6 months each year through 1986 applyparastyle “fig//caption/p[1]” parastyle “FigCapt”