What can we learn from seabirds about the Oceans?
What can we learn about seabirds from understanding the Oceans better?
What's "going on" with seabirds, the oceans, and the whole ocean ecosystem?
Is anything in these areas changing? What? Why? How?
Are there ramifications for us (including our grandchildren), which we need to focus on?
The theory here is that focusing on a few seabird species in depth will force us into thinking about, questioning and learning more about the complete ocean ecosystem, and that this may help us see some actions we should take, e.g., perhaps some specific actions we could take to minimize potential damages to the ocean food web, etc. Even if this is impossible, understanding the ocean ecosystem better can at least give us more enjoyment when we take pelagic or coastal nature trips, and perhaps help us find more seabirds.
- What do we need to focus on, and learn more about?
- For each characteristic/dimension ask what is it, and its typical value, & how/why is it changing?
- Ask these questions for the characteristic both below the sea and above it, in the atmosphere.
- And describe the interchange/relationships between the characteristic above and below the sea.
- For example, focus on temperatures below and above the water. Similarly for CO2 and O2.
- Be global but emphasize the ocean off New England, and especially during September.
- What are the key questions, issues, variables/changes and risks?
- Why are the seabirds "here" and not "there"?
- Why have Northern Fulmars & Manx Shearwaters expanded their range so far westward from
Iceland, UK and other European breeding grounds over the last 50+ years?
- Why do many seabirds travel vast distances across the oceans while others are fairly
sedentary near their breeding islands? Is it because of food availability/scarcity?
- Seabird islands: are they all about isolation and predation? What is the outlook for them?
- What is the seabird's food and is it decreasing/changing?
- Is seabird breeding being impacted by Arctic ice melting?
- Are some seabirds threatened, and in decline, etc?
- Are seabird changes indicating anythings we need to be concerned about?
- Are oceans experiencing anything like SilentSpring??
- Ocean sunlight.
- Ocean turbidity, clarity, etc.
- Ocean temperature, increasing
- Ocean oxygen O2, decreasing
- Ocean CO2 and methane, increasing?
- Ocean salinity changing? Apparently Yes, caused by Greenland glacier melt!
- Ocean acidity, increasing! Why? Because of CO2 increases?
- Calcium, needed for shell fish, etc.
- Ocean radioactivity, increasing near some nuclear reactors in Japan.
- Ocean sea-levels (and volume of liquid water in the oceans), increasing
- Ocean currents, changing?
- Ocean impacts on atmosphere and storms? And storm impacts on
oceans?
- Is marine weather getting more extreme? If yes, why?
- Ocean chemicals from land, possibly industrial, pharmaceutical, radioactive, etc.?
- Petrochemicals in the water.
- Ocean contamination, pollution, nano-particles, etc, increasing
- MicroBeads in the ocean? Microbeads
- Ocean lead and mercury, decreasing\
- Ocean sounds, such as whale songs, propellor noise, sonar, etc.
- Ocean microbiology, is it changing?
- Ocean fish health and populations, decreasing
- such as menhaden article by P.Comins
- Fish and web of ocean life forms, decreasing
- Over fishing
- Trawling
- Mercury, lead, pharmaceuticals, etc in fish?
- Insecticides, such as that for West Nile Virus.
- Other
- Ocean birds. Focus on a few species…. especially Procellariiformes .
Show a distbution map for each….
Use these species to learn more about the oceans…
including species which we can see near New England (asterisked)
and some species which we can not see around New England (without asterisk)...
- Sabine's Gull* (along with the closely related Ivory Gull and Ross' Gull)
- Great Skua* (and its several southern counterparts)
- Northern Fulmar* (and its southern counterpart)
- Manx Shearwater* (and the closely related small "black&white shearwaters")
- Sooty Shearwater*
- Wilson's Storm-Petrel* (Wilson's Storm Petrel)
- Elliot's Storm-Petrel (Elliot's Storm Petrel)
- Black-capped Petrel* (Black-capped Petrel)
- Fiji/Macgillivray's Petrel (Fiji Petrel)
- Black-footed Albatross (Black-footed Albatross)
- Southern Giant Petrel (Southern Giant Petrel)
- Fairy Prion (Fairy Prion)
- Snow Petrel (Snow Petrel)
- South Georgia Diving Petrel (South Georgia Diving Petrel) (Diving petrel)
- New Zealand Storm-Petrel (New Zealand Storm Petrel , New Zealand Storm-petrel is found breeding near Auckland , New Zealand Storm-petrel discovered breeding 50 km from Auckland City )
- Impacts on atmospheric weather
- Arctic Ocean and polar ice cap (salt water).
- Glaciers (fresh water) in Antarctica, Greenland, etc.
If you want an idea of a good pelagic trip around Antarctica, including a few of our study-species above, check out Rick Heil's report...
New England Seabirds -Drake Passage CBC December 2001 Rick Heil Report
- What are the relationships between all this and birds, and people?
- Do we have "Silent Spring" all over again? Lets hope not.
- 50 years ago Rachel Carson's "SilentSpring" raised our awareness and understanding
about terrestrial ecosystem dependencies and risks. How much of the marine
equivalent do we have now? We all need to LMA (learn more about) these matters in the ocean
now. Until more people LMA the oceans we will not act sufficiently now to protect our
oceans and possibly ourselves, our children, our grand children, and our future generations.
- One goal of our Cape Cod trips is that all of us learn more about the vast ocean ecosystem, by using seabirds to focus our thinking and questions on key ocean-related interdependencies. For example, is the amount of oxygen gas dissolved in the oceans declining, why, and what might be the consequences? Is this impacting the ocean food web, including seabirds? For another example, why have the Northern Fulmar and the Manx Shearwater extended their breeding range westward so dramatically in the last 50 years? And where do the majority of yearling Sabine's Gulls hang out during their first summer? And how will the melting Greenland glaciers impact the "Global Conveyor Belt" deep current and beyond? What factors affect the location of the patches where we find seabirds off the coast of New England? What does the underwater topography look like in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean and around Cape Cod, and how does this impact the distribution of seabirds and other life forms (and how do upwellings work)? How does "fish migration" and whale migration impact seabirds? Etc, etc, etc.
- One hope for this blog is to focus on each of these major questions, issues and risks and, over time, to start to include some data (from authoritative sources), thoughts and information about these questions/ issues/risks here. Hopefully this might stoke the interests of a few young people to pursue these subjects in more depth during their life.... and for a few of us older-folks to enjoy the beauty and connectedness of all this.
- By the way, the oceans provide us with oxygen gas to breathe (half of all oxygen is produced by the oceans), with much of our FRESH water (by evaporation followed by precipitation over land), and with lots of fish and other seafood for us to eat. Furthermore, oceans remove much of the CO2 from the atmosphere, largely by photosynthesis done by many species in the ocean (reducing the global warming of the planet). In other words, the oceans are essential for us, for our survival.
