[mou] weather and seabirds

[Jim Williams]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ellen Paul <ellen.paul@verizon.net>
Date: February 4, 2006 8:58:28 AM CST
To: ORNITH-L@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU
Subject: The bad news is....
Much as it is great to see ornithologists in the news, one would rather 
it not be in an article like this...

Ellen Paul
Executive Director
The Ornithological Council
Mailto:ellen.paul@verizon.net
Ornithological Council Website:  http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET
"Providing Scientific Information about Birds"

January 31, 2006

  Wash. Weather May Be Killing Seabirds

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 10:33 p.m. ET

NEAH BAY, Wash. (AP) -- The mass starvation deaths of murres on Tatoosh 
Island off the Olympic Peninsula may be due in part to unusual weather 
patterns along the West Coast, scientists say.

Last year didn't have the winds and currents necessary to maintain the 
network of marine food crucial to the seabirds' diet. Breeding failures 
during the summer were preceded by tens of thousands of birds washing 
up dead on beaches in Washington, Oregon and California.

In Washington, the state's largest colony of glaucous-winged gulls 
suffered when the normal fledge count plummeted from 8,000 chicks to 88 
last year.

The breeding failure isn't expected to harm the birds' overall 
population, but it has raised questions.

''The whole process broke down,'' said University of Washington 
researcher Julia Parrish, who witnessed bird deaths repeatedly last 
summer while observing 6,000 nesting murres on the island about a half 
mile off Cape Flattery at the tip of the peninsula. ''We don't know 
what happened.''

Researchers met over the issue earlier this month in Seattle, but were 
unable to trace the source of the strange weather, except to consider 
global warming's effects in the past year.

The oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, marine mammal experts, 
seabird biologists and researchers who model ecosystems and ocean 
circulation now plan to write a series of scientific papers carefully 
documenting their observations.

Last year, the region enjoyed sunny winter days with little snow in the 
mountains. The warm, dry weather also marked the third year of 
above-normal ocean temperatures.

In early spring, the rain came. And when the birds should have been 
making and feeding babies, they were instead found dead.

''It was the birds that were the first harbingers of this whole 
problem,'' said Bill Peterson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration, which set up the Seattle meeting.

At the same time, researchers recorded low catches of juvenile salmon 
and rockfish, and there were sightings of emaciated gray whales. Those 
findings were preceded by the first appearance in Washington waters of 
thousands of squid normally not found north of San Francisco. And a 
plankton typically found near San Diego bloomed along Northwest 
beaches.

Scientists say to expect more of the same as the planet warms and 
weather patterns are altered.

''There are all these unconnected reports of biological failures,'' 
said John McGowan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La 
Jolla, Calif. ''It's all the way up and down the coast. ... There's a 
lot of evidence there are important changes going on in the Pacific 
coast system.''

Parrish directs the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, made 
up of 300 volunteers who scour Oregon and Washington beaches for dead 
birds.

Based on monthly surveys, researchers estimate the dead birds numbered 
in the tens of thousands, mostly Brandt's cormorants and common murres.

''They were clearly starving to death -- no fat, reduced musculature,'' 
Parrish said. ''The smoking gun is no food.''

The cormorant and murre both rely heavily on diving deep underwater for 
small schooling baitfish that also feed whales, seals, salmon and other 
animals.

Murres on Tatoosh Island feed on sand lance, herring, surf smelt and 
eulachon.

Last summer the birds couldn't find any sand lance and hardly any 
herring. Catches of the other two fish also were reduced.

Parrish's team instead saw the birds preying on the Pacific saury, a 
rare sight in 14 years of observations.

''The steak and chicken fell out of the diet,'' Parrish said. ''It's 
like going to the grocery store and (seeing) there are only a few yucky 
things in the store. You adapt by using what's there.''

Throughout the West Coast researchers recorded similar findings.

At Triangle Island in British Columbia and California's Farallon 
Islands, scientists saw a third seabird, the Cassin's auklet, show 
signs of starvation, said Bill Sydeman of the Point Reyes Bird 
Observatory.

The Farallon auklets started the breeding season late. Only half as 
many as normal even tried. Then they abandoned the nests.

''That's unprecedented in 35 years of studying Cassin's auklets on the 
Farallons,'' Sydeman said.

Along the Washington and Oregon coasts, researchers believe it was the 
lack of winds that led to birds' deaths.

In the spring, the Aleutian Low, a weather system that brings winter 
storms to the area, begins moving north. Winds push the surface of the 
Pacific Ocean to the southwest, allowing deeper, colder ocean water to 
surge in, bringing with it nutrients from dead plankton, dead fish and 
fish excrement.

''Basically, you can think of it as a lot of schmutz that settles to 
the bottom,'' Parrish said.

Without that perennial fertilization, there's no plankton, therefore 
breaking the food cycle for many fish and birds.

Last year, winds from the north didn't really materialize until 
mid-July, instead of the normal March or April.

In the last 30 years, the top 300 feet of the Pacific warmed and became 
more dense, said Scripps' McGowan, whose institution has studied ocean 
temperatures since 1919 and started a comprehensive Pacific monitoring 
project in 1949.

Off Southern California, zooplankton are down 70 percent, fish larvae 
50 percent, and there have been massive die-offs of kelp.

In Puget Sound, the number of seabirds has dropped by nearly half since 
the 1970s. Nearly a third of seabird species are legally protected or 
candidates for protection.

''All kinds of things are changing, and the biology is responding in 
funny, nonlinear, confusing ways,'' McGowan said. ''Not everything has 
declined, but many things have.''

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Information from: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, http://www.seattle-pi.com/

forward by Jim Williams, Wayzata, Minnesota