As I was explained by the crew of the aircraft, the AS-61R is extremely safe, since it is able to float on the surface of the sea even with Force 4 wind conditions. The helicopter, with Force 2 waves, can float even if the engines are switched off. Incidentally, yesterday night at 22.15LT, an HH-3F identical to the one I flew from Trapani, ditched in the Tyrrehenian sea 5 NM W of Pratica di Mare during a night SAR training mission. The aircraft belonged to the 85 Gruppo SAR of the 15 Stormo and the 5 people on board escaped the aircraft with minor injuries. Most probably, they have followed the above procedure (it must have been difficult to remain calm at night, in the sea) and the floating capabalities of the helicopter have played an important role in the successful result of the escape procedure.
ALL INCLUSIVE, A LA CARTE
Give new meaning to all inclusive dining with specialty tabletop grills. Be in the spotlight as you stir-fry your own dinner of fresh-caught shrimp, swordfish, chicken or beef. Sautee fresh vegetables and cook the protein of your choice. Tonight belongs to you.
Open select nights
A la carte restaurants at Breezes are on a rotation sequence and are closed some nights. There is at least one restaurant open for dinner every night, which is sometimes the main buffet dining room.
CJ McCollum is taking the night off for rest for the second leg of the back-to-back set. Daniels has fared well as a starter this season, posting averages of 8.5 points, 5.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.9 steals.
Alvarado wasn't able to play in Friday's game against the Spurs, but he'll return Saturday and provide some backcourt support with CJ McCollum taking the night off for rest. It's more likely that Dyson Daniels sees the bulk of the point guard minutes Saturday.
As expected, McCollum won't be available Saturday after playing Wednesday and Friday due to him not being cleared for air travel until later in the weekend. The previous games this week were his first two games back following a 12-game absence due to a cracked rib and collapsed right lung, and he didn't miss a beat, averaging 19.5 points, 6.5 assists, 3.5 rebounds, 2.0 steals and 1.0 blocks in 33.0 minutes. While McCollum will get the night off Saturday, he's expected to return to action Monday versus the Kings, which is a quarterfinal matchup of the In-Season Tournament.
Murphy made his season debut Friday and recorded 18 points (7-13 FG, 4-10 3Pt), three rebounds, one assist, one block and one steal over 22 minutes. With Saturday's contest being the second night of a back-to-back set, it is not surprising to see him out. Look for the Pelicans to continue easing him back into the swing of things in the immediate future.
Williamson has sat out the second half of each back-to-back set thus far, but that could change Saturday. Green left things open-ended, saying his expectations could change, but for now, it appears Williams will play Friday and Saturday. Despite taking the occasional night off, Williamson's return to action this season has been a success. He's averaging 24.0 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.1 steals in 31.9 minutes per game.
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Most seabirds are visual predators whose foraging is constrained by the duration of daylight [1]. However, some species are active at night in a facultative or condition-dependent way apparently to reduce interference competition with other seabirds [2], to take advantage of the diel vertical migration of prey [3], to avoid predators [4], [5], and/or to obtain fish discards and bait during nocturnal fishing operations [6], [7]. In the case of pelicans, direct observations of foraging birds and telemetry studies have shown that five out of the eight extant species of pelicans may facultatively forage at night (see review in Nelson (1985) [8]). Nocturnal habit appears to be opportunistic in Brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) [9], and common in American white pelicans (P. erythrorhynchos) but associated with a lower prey capture rate compared to daytime foraging [10]. However, the empirical data on these species are limited and the adaptive advantages of nocturnal foraging for pelicans are unclear.
Peruvian pelicans (P. thagus) are resident seabirds of the Humboldt Current upwelling system, breeding from northern Perú to central Chile [11], [12]. Unlike all other member of the Pelecanidae, Peruvian pelicans are strict marine predators consuming primarily Peruvian anchovies (Engraulis ringens) and other pelagic fish [13], [14], [15] that are captured by shallow plunge-diving, surface-seizing or through kleptoparasitism [16]. Additionally, they efficiently scavenge fish discards and offal at fishing ports and boats (Zavalaga C.B., pers. observ.). Based on observations of birds returning to the colony a few hours following sunset, and at every hour during full moon nights, some have hypothesized that Peruvian pelicans engage in nocturnal foraging activities [17], [18]. Nevertheless, to date no studies are available to validate this assumption, and it is still unknown whether Peruvian pelicans actively feed at night or are merely commuting during the night after foraging during the daytime.
Here, we provide the first snapshot of Peruvian pelican foraging movements and activities patterns at sea, and demonstrate that they undertake nocturnal foraging trips after deploying GPS dataloggers on five incubating birds from Isla Lobos de Tierra, Perú. We subsequently evaluate possible causes and adaptive advantages of nocturnal foraging.
Five incubating pelicans were fitted with GiPSy-2 GPS dataloggers (Technosmart s.r.l. www.technosmart.eu) programmed to record either one fix every second for three loggers or one at 10 sec intervals for two loggers. We anticipated a difficult recapture and possible loss of the GPS given the nervous nature of Peruvian pelicans. Thus, to recover GPS records without recapturing birds, we added a blue-tooth board (BT, 1.5 g) to the GPS to allow remote data downloading and memory resetting at distance. An external USB - BT antenna adapter was used to optimize communication between a portable computer and the GPS at distances >20 m. Each GPS was powered with three LS 14500 SAFT batteries (2600 mAh, 3.7 V) connected in parallel. The entire assemblage was encapsulated in heat-shrink plastic tubing and attached to the bird's lower back feathers (above the uropygeal gland) with waterproof Tesa tape. The GPS and accessories had a combined weight of 90 g, which represented
Four out of five pelicans resumed their breeding duties after attachment of the loggers and were seen incubating their eggs by the time we left the island. We were able to download complete data from all these birds. One bird was seen 24 h after capture and was not resighted again; but the mate was still incubating by the time we left the island. We were able to download data from this bird for the first 24 h, which included the record of an incomplete foraging trip. Because the inbound path was truncated 5 km from the island, the initial data of the fifth bird was included only for the calculations of maximum foraging distance, departure time and at-sea activities.
It is clear from this study that all tagged birds undertook nocturnal trips. Diurnal trips were also observed in two birds that left the colony by mid-morning but during these excursions they stayed at sea also overnight, returning to the island on the next morning. Peruvian pelicans generally departed from the colony from late afternoon onwards and returned the next day within one hour after sunrise. Likewise, the sinuosity of the bird's tracks while floating on the water was much higher than during other sections of the trip (i.e. the birds were not passively drifting with the ocean currents, Fig. 2). All these results suggest that pelicans were probably feeding during these nocturnal excursions.
Kleptoparasitism and predation have been suggested as selective pressures that force seabirds to remain at sea during the night [4], [5] but this hypothesis can be ruled out for our study since potential pirates of Peruvian pelicans such as frigatebirds (Fregatta spp.) and large gulls (Larus spp.) [16], [17] were absent or present in small numbers on Lobos de Tierra. Peruvian pelicans are also scavengers and pirates [16] and they can benefit from fishing activities throughout fish discards as do other seabird species [6], [7], [43]. Pelicans could follow purse seine vessels that operate during the night to catch anchovies close to the sea surface [34]. However, results from a long-term monitoring program in the last decade along the Peruvian coast indicate that net hauling occurred primarily during daytime, with a median net setting time at 10:00 h (Joo, R., pers. comun., results derived from Bertrand et al. 2008 [44] and Joo et al. 2011 [45]), and therefore the nocturnal behavior of Peruvian pelicans was not linked to the activities of the commercial fishery.
This swanky Italian restaurant is filled nightly with Miami's movers and shakers who want to dine on lobster ravioli and its famous bread basket while also soaking up views of Biscayne Bay from its expansive patio.
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