COASST Discovers Seabird Die-Off

- adapted from a letter by Julia Parrish and an article by Carina Stanton in the Seattle Times, July 15, 2005,“Warmer Oceans May be Killing West Coast Marine Life” In June Julia Parrish saw that Common Murres and Pelagic Cormorants were over two weeks late for nesting on Tatoosh Island (off the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula). She looked at her COASST database and found records of dead Common Murres and Brandt’s Cormorants beaching at high rates in the south outer coast of Washington, notably at Ocean Shores. Brandt’s Cormorants were especially affected. Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington, has obtained much data from volunteers for COASST, the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, which she directs. More than a dozen Vashon Islanders participate in COASST, though dead seabirds have not been found here on the Island in large numbers. Parrish checked with researcher Bill Sydeman, who runs a large seabird research program on the Farallon Islands near San Francisco, and learned that murres and cormorants there nested about a month late, and that for the first time in 35 years, Cassin’s Auklets had abandoned nesting for the year. In northern California, at the Moss Landing Marine Lab, Hannah Nevins had also seen increased numbers of beached dead Common Murres and Brandt’s Cormorants. Autopsies on 20 of them showed they had all starved. Scientists have noted that west coast ocean temperatures were 2 to 5 degrees above normal in June, due apparently to a shift in the winds that usually stimulate the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. By late July the situation was correcting itself. Fortunately, as Parrish points out, the affected seabird species are very long-lived, so a die-off and reduced reproduction rates for a few years are not likely to severely impact their populations over the long term. Some Audubon members are wondering whether the abnormally high numbers of alcids seen in offshore waters around Vashon this summer are due to the scarcity of marine life in the outer coastal waters.