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Half of Murres seabird population dies after this happened · How To Protect The Ocean

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  For the period of 2014 to 2016, there was a marine
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  heat wave called the blob in the northern Pacific Ocean.
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  It affected a lot of things and it didn't help that there was an
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  El Nino year during that time or an El Nino cycle during that time.
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  We haven't really quantified the effects that it
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  had on species really until now. Studies
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  are starting to come out saying that species such as the murre, a seabird, a
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  very common seabird in Alaska, have had about a
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  half of their population die off. That's over four million individuals
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  die off, not just because of the heat wave, but because of
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  the effects after the heat wave, which makes it even scarier and
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  why we should be really worried about the effects of climate change. We're
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  going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's
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  start the show. Hey
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  everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
• 0:54
  your host, Andrew Luan. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how
• 0:57
  you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by
• 1:00
  taking action. And I have to, again, apologize for
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  my voice. This cold does not seem to be going away. It's
• 1:08
  affecting everything I do, but, especially
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  when I talk, and now I'm really congested, so I just wanted
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  to apologize for that. Anyway, This is the podcast where
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  you find out everything about the ocean So if you want to know more about the
• 1:21
  ocean you want to know how you can protect the ocean Not only do you want to listen to this
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  podcast, but you want to go over to our website speak up for blue.com
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  That's speak up for blue.com you get an information episodes
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  there as well as just information on
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  can just sign up with your email for free at www.speakupforblue.com
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  forward slash newsletter. That's www.speakupforblue.com forward
• 1:57
  slash newsletter. I mentioned I have a
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  cold and something that's helping me get through my cold over the
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  last few days, especially as I get closer and closer to the holidays. And
• 2:07
  I want to have a good holidays. I don't want to be sick over the holidays. So my
• 2:10
  big thing is sleep, nutrition, and also my
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  magic mind. Magic mind is something that I've been using over the
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  I've seen a lot of people with pneumonia with like all these different types of
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  viruses going around and and it's you know it's it's it's causing them
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  it's causing them to disrupt their day their day-to-day activity
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  this is allowing me to fight off a common cold hopefully it
• 2:50
  doesn't get any worse and it allows me to say hey you know what i
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  feel better about myself i know i'm putting healthy things in my body and
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  that helps a lot now this is obviously not a cure for any kind of virus but it
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  helps me keep fighting off everything that keeps my immune system up.
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  So I like to thank MagicMind for that. So if you want
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  it out, love to hear what you think about it. just hit me
• 3:28
  up on how to protect the ocean Instagram, just DM me, love
• 3:32
  to hear your thoughts on that. Anyway, let's get into the episode. This
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  is a really interesting, I'm not a seabird expert by any means, but
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  they've always interested me in their patterns and their trends. Obviously,
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  they really tell a story about how healthy
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  the ocean is and how plentiful the food is in the
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  ocean when you have a healthy population of seabirds around.
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  And in Alaska, on the Pacific Ocean side, MERS
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  it pronounced MERS. It's spelt m-u-r-r-e-s It's
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  a common seabird and they look a little bit like flying penguins their
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  stout tuxedo style bodies dive and swim in
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  the ocean and eat small fish and then fly back to the islands
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  off and or coastal cliffs where they nest and large colonies
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  But their hearty physiques disguise how vulnerable these birds
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  are to changing ocean conditions They rely on food
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  from the ocean. So any disruption in of the ocean and
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  the food supply will disrupt this population. This population, healthy-wise,
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  back in 2008, this population in a healthy state is
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  about 8 million individuals back in 2008 when measured.
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  The species has been monitored from 2008 to 2020, and
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  some studies have come out to say, hey, you know what? The species isn't doing very
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  well. The health of the population is actually cut into half. And there's
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  a number of variables around that. And obviously, there's some day-to-day things,
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  like in a regular situation, There are
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  disruptions in the environment. There are disruptions to
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  populations. Population can undergo small die-offs. A
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  population can undergo changes in just like
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  short-term disruptions, right? If something was displaced in
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  their colony or where they go on their cliffs or in their islands, maybe
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  that would affect their young of year for that year or their reproductive
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  group for that year. The babies, essentially. And then there's other times
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  where, you know, maybe the food supply moved over a little bit and it came back
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  the next year. So that year that they moved over, maybe the
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  population didn't do so well. There's a lot of different things that
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  could happen, right? We just don't know. Sometimes diseases break out in
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  a colony and that colony can lose some individuals. It could lose
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  hundreds, it could lose thousands, it could lose a million or so. But
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  the ability for that healthy population to bounce back is really what
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  we look for in healthy populations. We have small die-offs all
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  the time, and then their ability to come back to the right
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  number of individuals, or come back to even more,
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  or just a little bit less, shows the recovery of where we're at. We monitor it
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  just like we monitor fish. But not a lot of people eat seabirds, and
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  that's okay, but we monitor their population on the ability to recover, ability
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  to buffer a system as it changes through time. But
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  over the periods of 2014 and 2016, we saw the
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  heat wave, the blob. And this was a heat wave that was combined with
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  a couple of El Nino years, made everything super,
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  super warm on the sea surface temperature, and it just changed
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  a lot of things. Some things we just don't even know how much
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  it changed yet, and we're just getting a little bit of an idea. So
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  in 2020, the University of Washington led Coastal Observation
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  and Seabird Team, also known as COASST, which is a great acronym, by
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  the way. Scientists put up a lot of acronyms, but this was
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  really good. It was COASST, C-O-A-S-S-T. Very good
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  acronym. It makes sense. Everything's looking on the coast. You're doing Coastal
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  Observation and Seabird Survey Team. Very good. The observers first
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  identified the massive mortality event affecting common murres along
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  the west coast of Alaska. The study documented 62,000 carcasses,
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  mostly in Alaska, in one year. In some places, beachings
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  were more than a thousand times the normal rates, but the 2020 study
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  did not estimate the total size of the die-off after
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  the 2014 to 2016 blob event, right? That was
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  one of the big things. Now this was a citizen science
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  program that the University of Washington had led and so which
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  is basically the coastal residents search at local beaches to
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  find dead birds and documented those dead birds which contributed to
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  this new study and it was led by federal scientists from the U.S. Fisheries
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  and Wildlife which is kind of interesting. So the one that was published December 12th
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  just recently in Science, a team led by the U.S. Fisheries and
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  Wildlife Service analyzed years of colony-based surveys to
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  estimate total mortality and later impacts. So
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  the analysis of 13 colonies surveyed between
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  2008 and 2022 finds that the colony size of the
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  Gulf of Alaska east of the Alaska Peninsula dropped by
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  half after the marine heat wave. In colonies along the eastern
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  Bering Sea, west of the peninsula, the decline was
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  even steeper at 75% loss. So it was led
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  by Heather Renner, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service,
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  estimates that 4 million Alaska common murres died in
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  total, about half of the total population, and no recovery has
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  yet to be seen. The study shows clear and surprisingly long-lasting impacts
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  of a marine heat wave on top of marine predator species, as
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  said by Julia Parrish, a University of Washington professor of aquatic
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  and fishery sciences and of biology, who was the co-author
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  of the paper, the 2020 paper and the new study. Importantly, she goes
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  on, the effect of the heat wave wasn't via thermal stress on
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  the birds, but rather shifts in the food web. That's in
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  the food web, leaving murres suddenly and fatally without enough
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  food. Here's the problem. A lot of the times, as I mentioned, usually
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  the short-term disruptions. inevitably
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  starving these species, right? These individuals in this population
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  to the point where they lose half of their population. There's no recovery
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  yet because the food within the ocean hasn't
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  recovered yet. When we start to see animals either shifting areas
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  because it's too hot, And these birds haven't been able to find
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  where this new population is. Or the
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  population that they're feeding on, the prey, have actually just died off because it's
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  too hot. Animals within the ocean have a certain range of
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  heat tolerance. There are reasons why certain species are where
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  they are. Cold water species are in the cold because they require ranges
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  in the cold. If it gets too hot, their bodies can't handle it. And
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  so they either have to move to colder areas where it's more comfortable, or
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  they end up dying off. That will affect the predator-prey relationship
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  of these MERS seabirds. If the MERS can't find enough
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  food, their population will die off. They will not recover
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  until that population goes up. And we have seen this
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  in a lot of predator-prey relationships. We've seen that in
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  A great analogy would be the sea otter, the kelp,
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  as well as the sea urchins in the Pacific Ocean. With a lot of
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  sea otters around, they keep the urchins intact. And
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  without those sea otters, we'll see an increase in the
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  predation of sea urchins on kelp, and we'll see a decrease in kelp
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  habitats, right? We also see it a little bit from sea
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  stars when we start to see sea stars eat kelp habitats as well. This
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  all fluctuates as each of these populations of
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  species fluctuates. So once we start to see a reintroduction of
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  sea otters, then the sea urchins go down a little bit
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  and the kelp kind of come up. Of course, the abundance of the
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  sea stars also affect the recovery of the kelp forests
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  as well. So it all just teeter-totters based on the
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  abundance of each of these populations of different species. And it can get quite complex.
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  But when an overall shift in the temperature
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  the ocean will change the actual prey relationship
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  right the predator prey relationship with the with losing the abundance of
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  a Specific prey and there is no other prey to take
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  that place Then you're gonna start to see a loss with the seabird
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  population just as we're seeing by half and no recovery in
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  Place right? We haven't seen anything that's been observed If you don't remember,
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  the warm blob was an unusually warm and long-lasting patch of
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  surface water in the Northeast Pacific from 2014 to
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  2016, affecting weather and coastal marine ecosystems from California all the
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  way to Alaska. As ocean productivity decreased, the effect of
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  food supply on top predators, including seabirds, marine mammals, and
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  commercially important fish, also changed. Based on the condition
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  of the MERS carcasses, authors of the 2020 study concluded the most
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  likely cause of this mass mortality event was starvation. So
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  there it is. They starve to death, unfortunately. Most of them starve to death.
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  Obviously, this is a problem for this population. How this will affect the
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  rest of the food web, we don't know. There's still a
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  lot of research that needs to be done. But it appears that an event
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  as significant as the blob for these two years have affected
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  the populations of a top predator within this food
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  system, which is telling of how the food web within the ocean
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  has changed. And we don't even know those effects yet. There's going to be more
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  research that needs to be done to be able to see what those effects are
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  on this food web and what those changes are. But we may have
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  actually passed a tipping point in our ecosystem management. And
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  we have, like, where recovery for some of
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  the pre-die-off abundance is not possible. Just think about that.
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  We may be at this tipping point for this species and many others where
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  we may not be able to have them recover. They may just be down at
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  4 million and maybe even lower in the future because if their prey hasn't
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  recovered, their prey population hasn't recovered, they're not going
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  to recover. more and more individuals are gonna die until they
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  can actually have enough prey to sustain that population, right?
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  That number, that population, and we don't know what that number is. So obviously they need
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  to do more research on what that prey population is and where
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  it's at from its population, how that's changed, has it moved over, who
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  knows? We don't know how it's gonna recover, but obviously monitoring and
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  research needs to be done. And this is why it's so important to fund research. This
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  is why it's so important to be at a point where we can ensure
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  that governments as well as nonprofit organizations and
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  institutes and foundations are funding this type of research because we
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  need to know how these changes are affecting populations around
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  the world from top predators to the bottom of the food web and everything in
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  between. So that's it for today's episode. I want to just thank you for listening.
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  And if you want to have if you have any more questions or comments, please feel
• 13:40
  free to put them on the comments down below in the YouTube channel. You
• 13:44
  can also put them on Spotify. They allow you to actually comment. I'd
• 13:47
  be more than happy to answer any kind of comments. I'm trying to look out for them.
• 13:51
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  Instagram. DM me. I'd be more than happy to have a chat with you. And I
• 14:11
  want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How To Protect The Ocean podcast.