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Animals Affected by Climate Change: How Seabirds Reveal the Hidden Impacts of Warming Oceans · How To Protect The Ocean

• 1:00:00
  Most of us see seagulls on the beach
• 1:00:01
  fighting over fries and think,
• 1:00:03
  "Ah, they're just noisy trash birds."
• 1:00:05
  But what if I told you those same
• 1:00:07
  seabirds are warning us about the entire
• 1:00:09
  health of the ocean?
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  In a new study, scientists have
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  discovered that these seabirds aren't
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  just the victims of climate change,
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  they're the messengers, and their story
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  reveals how fragile
• 1:00:19
  marine ecosystems really are.
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  We're going to find out more about this
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  study on this episode of the How to
• 1:00:24
  Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:00:25
  Let's start the show.
• 1:00:33
  Hey everybody, welcome back to another
• 1:00:34
  exciting episode of the How
• 1:00:35
  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:00:36
  I'm your host Andrew Lewin, and this is
• 1:00:38
  the podcast where you find out what's
• 1:00:39
  happening with the ocean,
• 1:00:40
  how you can speak up for the ocean, and
• 1:00:41
  what you can do to live for a better
• 1:00:43
  ocean by taking action.
• 1:00:45
  On today's episode, I've got
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  such a cool episode for you.
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  We're going to be talking about seabirds
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  and a new study that's entitled,
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  "Ecosystems Mediate Climate Impacts on
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  Northern Hemisphere Seabirds."
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  That's a lot to take in, I know.
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  But I've got Dr. Helen Kline, who's here
• 1:01:02
  today to break us all down for us and
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  just kind of tell us where
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  seabirds are telling us a story.
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  A story of suffering.
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  A story that's saying, "Hey, you know
• 1:01:11
  what? This ecosystem isn't right."
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  When I was growing up in Ontario,
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  seabirds weren't exactly on my radar.
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  I'd see seagulls every once in a while,
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  and they would be eating trash on the
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  ground, whatever's in the trash can,
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  or sometimes it would take fries right
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  out of kids' hands,
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  depending on where they are.
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  They were cunning, they were
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  smart, and they were hungry.
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  But then I went out to the west coast,
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  and I saw these seagulls, same type of
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  species it looked like,
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  and these skulls are just massive.
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  They're big, and they're white, and
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  they're beautiful, and
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  it's powerful at that.
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  It's nothing like the ones I see picking
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  up trash inside Ontario,
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  and that moment stuck with me.
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  It reminded me of how
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  much this ocean has a story.
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  We miss this story because we're only
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  seeing the small
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  human-alerted part of it.
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  So when my friend Annette sent me a paper
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  about seabirds and their
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  suffering with climate change,
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  and how the prey that's in the ocean that
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  they feed on is really
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  important to be diverse,
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  is really the important part of this and
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  how we can actually keep seabirds,
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  which are like the canary in the coal
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  mine literally telling us
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  how our ocean health is,
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  maintaining that ocean health.
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  I was pretty excited to
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  interview Helen Kaelene.
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  This interview was really, really
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  memorable to me because I realized how
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  important it is to talk
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  about all parts of the ocean
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  and how the connection between birds that
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  are flying high in the sky and the ocean
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  is so, so important.
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  So we're going to find out today not only
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  how birds are affected by climate change,
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  how their prey is affected by climate
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  change, and how diversity really helps
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  stabilize these predators,
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  these top predators, which is basically
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  like almost apex predators that are
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  really, really important.
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  So we're going to find out all of that.
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  I've got resources
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  for you in this episode.
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  We're going to talk to Helen Kaelene.
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  Here is my interview with Helen. Enjoy.
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  And I will talk to you after.
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  Hey, Helen, welcome to the How
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  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  Are you ready to talk about
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  seabirds? I'm ready. Let's go.
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  All right. I'm excited because, as I
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  mentioned before,
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  before we start recording,
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  I don't get to talk about seabirds a lot.
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  One, because I'm not
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  an expert in seabirds.
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  I don't really know a lot about seabirds.
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  And so I'm super excited when this paper
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  kind of came across my email.
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  A friend of ours, Annette, she kind of
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  like was like, Hey, you know what? I've
• 1:03:27
  got a great paper for you to discuss on
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  how to protect the ocean.
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  I was like, Yes, let's do it. And then we
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  got introduced and we kind of got to know
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  each other through this.
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  And I'm super excited to hear about a
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  recent paper that you published with some
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  colleagues called Ecosystems Mediate
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  Climate Impact on
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  Northern Hemisphere Seabirds.
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  This is something I feel like is really
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  important as climate change is kind of
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  hitting everything that is around us.
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  We don't we talk a lot about fish moving
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  north and distribution shifting, but
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  we're not talking a lot about how that's
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  affecting seabirds, especially with
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  warming oceans and so forth.
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  So I'm looking forward to talking all
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  about this. But before we do, let's get
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  to know you a little bit more.
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  Why don't you tell us a little bit of who
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  you are and what you do.
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  Yeah. So thanks so much for having me on
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  the podcast. It's
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  really exciting to be here.
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  Yeah. As you said, my name is Helen
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  Killeen. I currently am working with the
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  California Department of Fish and
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  Wildlife as a science policy
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  specialist on fisheries work.
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  But my this paper was one of the products
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  out of my postdoc, which I did at the
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  Farallon Institute and Farallon Institute
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  is a small nonprofit that does all kinds
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  of really, really cool ecosystem scale
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  research with a particular focus on
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  marine predators like seabirds.
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  We have a long history of working with
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  seabirds and trying to understand how
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  climate and fishing and other human
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  activities can impact marine ecosystems
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  broadly and then how to how to conserve
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  or how to respond to those impacts.
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  Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah,
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  it's it's really neat work.
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  So before that, I did my PhD at UC Davis
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  completed my PhD in
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  marine ecology in 2022.
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  And before that, I was actually doing
• 1:05:20
  something totally different. I was
• 1:05:21
  working as a science teacher and then had
• 1:05:23
  a brief stint as a at a pizza shop. So
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  I've done a lot of different things.
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  But yeah, that's yeah, it's been a
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  winding path. But I've been really lucky
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  to find myself in a super
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  fulfilling and exciting career.
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  That's amazing. And I got to dive a
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  little deeper into this because we don't
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  get a lot of teachers turned scientists
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  or science teachers turn even more
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  science and getting into into research.
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  Did you always have a love for birds
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  because usually people who study birds
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  are pretty into birds like their birders
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  that like they go out
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  hiking and looking for birds.
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  They've got this little blood little
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  black book or a little book where they
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  write down all the birds and where they
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  were and stuff like that. Were you always
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  you always have an interest
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  in in birds in particular?
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  I wish that I could say yes. I know I I
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  was not one of those people. I was not
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  one of those like bird fanatics. But I
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  have so many friends who are bird
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  fanatics and I really,
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  really sympathize with them.
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  Birds are so cool. They're like these,
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  you know, amazing, unique gems that just
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  kind of like fly into
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  your life and then fly out.
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  Yeah, so I can I can really understand
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  the attraction to birds. But no, I was
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  not like a big bird fanatics before. I
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  like that. I like that because, you know,
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  not everybody has to be a
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  bird or just a study bird.
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  So you can be interested in it, but you
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  don't you may have other other hobbies
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  and stuff like that, which I like. I
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  think that's I think that's wonderful.
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  Now you you said you
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  were a science teacher.
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  Was that when you were younger, was that
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  what you wanted to do growing up? Like I
• 1:07:00
  want to be a teacher like this is what I
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  want to do. Yeah. So coming out of
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  college, I was I was feeling torn between
• 1:07:10
  several different career paths and and
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  teaching is something I've always really
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  cared about and thought about deeply and
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  really been interested in.
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  And so I became a high school teacher out
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  of college chemistry, physics and
• 1:07:25
  biology. Why high school? Why high
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  school? I think because I like the
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  science at that level.
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  Oh, okay. So much that you can like do
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  and say and I also really like that age
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  group. It's it's really fun to work with.
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  I love that. My daughter wants to become
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  a teacher. She's hitting more towards the
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  primary grades. And I'm just like, we
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  need good high school, like solid high
• 1:07:47
  school teachers like, you know, like, you
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  know, and I think that's like that that
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  new generation that's coming up. You see
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  a lot of them wanting to go elementary
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  and I'm like, oh, you got to go high
• 1:07:57
  school. Like, you know, I
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  always like to see that.
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  I mean, across the board, I think like
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  teachers are some of the most impactful
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  people. Oh, yeah. Period. So yeah, yeah.
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  One of the most difficult professions, I
• 1:08:07
  think to do on a regular, I know
• 1:08:09
  everybody's like, oh, you get the summers
• 1:08:10
  off and you get this and you get that.
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  But I'm like, I've seen classrooms. I've
• 1:08:14
  done, you know, I've done presentations
• 1:08:17
  in classrooms before. And it's I have a
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  new or I've always had a respect for what
• 1:08:22
  teachers have to put up with. And of
• 1:08:25
  course, class size is getting bigger and
• 1:08:26
  bigger. And that becomes
• 1:08:27
  a like, I can't do that.
• 1:08:28
  I can't even say how much of a challenge
• 1:08:31
  more of a challenge that is as class
• 1:08:32
  sizes get bigger and so forth. But the
• 1:08:35
  impact that they have, they're there for
• 1:08:37
  what, six, seven hours a day, maybe eight
• 1:08:39
  hours a day. But like, at least in front
• 1:08:41
  of kids for hours and hours on end,
• 1:08:43
  impacting everything they learn and how
• 1:08:46
  they like see life and things like that.
• 1:08:48
  So I just think that's awesome.
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  What was your favorite subject to teach?
• 1:08:52
  Was it chemistry or biology or physics or
• 1:08:55
  what did you get to teach
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  that was like the most memorable?
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  I think we probably had the most fun in
• 1:09:03
  physics because we just did a lot of like
• 1:09:07
  crazy good stuff and the students were
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  able to I taught mostly
• 1:09:13
  juniors and seniors. Okay.
• 1:09:15
  And they were able to just do a lot of
• 1:09:17
  explorations themselves. And that was
• 1:09:19
  really fun to be part of. But I like
• 1:09:21
  teaching all the classes. That's and I've
• 1:09:23
  taught some some college level courses
• 1:09:25
  since then. And it continues to be
• 1:09:27
  something that I care a lot about.
• 1:09:29
  That's great. Now, you pivoted going more
• 1:09:33
  towards research. What brought that on to
• 1:09:36
  make that that's a big that's a big thing
• 1:09:39
  like like teachers. I don't know what I
• 1:09:40
  live in Canada. So I don't know what
• 1:09:42
  teachers like what
• 1:09:43
  the profession is like.
• 1:09:44
  In the US but but in Canada that you're
• 1:09:47
  like you get to be a teacher. You're on a
• 1:09:50
  path to be set. You know pension all that
• 1:09:53
  kind of stuff is there. It is a pretty
• 1:09:56
  good like solid career and profession to
• 1:09:59
  be with as you retire. You can retire
• 1:10:01
  early and so forth. Just like a
• 1:10:02
  government official. But you know what
• 1:10:06
  made you pivot to go into more I guess
• 1:10:09
  research based from from being a teacher.
• 1:10:11
  Yeah. So I was sort of saying that I felt
• 1:10:16
  really torn about different career paths
• 1:10:18
  coming out of college. And you know,
• 1:10:21
  there was part of me that really wanted
• 1:10:22
  to work in conservation and environmental
• 1:10:26
  research and understanding nature and
• 1:10:30
  working to protect nature.
• 1:10:31
  It was like something that I also cared
• 1:10:34
  deeply about and working to working to
• 1:10:36
  protect nature in a way that benefited
• 1:10:37
  society. Right. So I think after after a
• 1:10:44
  while I was like I want to go back to
• 1:10:45
  graduate school and see where that goes.
• 1:10:47
  And I've been lucky enough that
• 1:10:49
  throughout graduate school and after I've
• 1:10:51
  always found ways to kind of still
• 1:10:53
  incorporate teaching
• 1:10:54
  into how I spent my day.
• 1:10:57
  I can imagine I can only imagine it never
• 1:10:58
  really gets out of you once you get that
• 1:11:00
  teaching in you. But you're still making
• 1:11:03
  a big change in career going from
• 1:11:05
  something that's paying you you know like
• 1:11:07
  a pretty good salary to graduate work
• 1:11:09
  which is quite the difference. That's a
• 1:11:12
  big decision to make. Were you ever torn
• 1:11:13
  in terms of like do I do it now? Like how
• 1:11:15
  long were you teaching before you did it
• 1:11:17
  and was that a difficult decision to go
• 1:11:20
  back to graduate school?
• 1:11:22
  That's a really good question. Okay, so
• 1:11:23
  cut. So I taught high school for two
• 1:11:26
  years, which I don't think was long
• 1:11:28
  enough for me to really understand how
• 1:11:30
  nice it is to have like
• 1:11:31
  a really stable salary.
• 1:11:35
  Right. Right.
• 1:11:37
  But so I don't I don't think that
• 1:11:40
  featured too much in the decision making
• 1:11:42
  for me. One thing that I have tried to
• 1:11:46
  tell students that I've mentored a lot is
• 1:11:48
  is that in the sciences, we're really
• 1:11:51
  lucky in graduate school and that most of
• 1:11:53
  the graduate or many graduate programs
• 1:11:56
  you can be you can get paid to do them or
• 1:11:58
  get them at least partially
• 1:12:00
  paid for. And I was lucky enough to find
• 1:12:03
  a PhD that you know paid my salary, paid
• 1:12:06
  my tuition, paid my health insurance. So
• 1:12:09
  it made it possible. Yeah, yeah, huge.
• 1:12:12
  Yeah. And then when you started to apply
• 1:12:14
  to grad school, did you have an idea of
• 1:12:17
  what type of like topic you were going?
• 1:12:21
  Did you go right into a PhD? Yeah, I went
• 1:12:24
  straight into a PhD. I
• 1:12:25
  did not do a Masters.
• 1:12:27
  Yeah, and then so like doing that, it's
• 1:12:29
  it's you know, just finding your topic
• 1:12:31
  and finding like an interest. What made
• 1:12:33
  you was it? It was on seabirds. So what
• 1:12:36
  made you go or was it on? Sorry, was it
• 1:12:38
  on seabirds? Was it on seabirds? Was it
• 1:12:41
  on seabirds? Or was it like another
• 1:12:42
  marine topic? No, it was different. Yeah,
• 1:12:45
  it was, you know, like seabirds are these
• 1:12:49
  like big, like
• 1:12:50
  beautiful, charismatic creatures.
• 1:12:53
  My PhD, my doctoral research was on
• 1:12:56
  larval fishes and blinkton. Yeah, so it
• 1:13:00
  was like, you know, zoom way down to the
• 1:13:03
  side of like a hangnail or something like
• 1:13:05
  that. I was studying those organisms. So
• 1:13:07
  what made you like go towards that route?
• 1:13:11
  Yeah, yeah. Okay, so when I, you know, I
• 1:13:15
  was broadly interested in doing some
• 1:13:18
  related to the environment, specific more
• 1:13:21
  specifically than that, I'd been really
• 1:13:23
  captured by some of the coursework I did
• 1:13:26
  and some of the internships that I did in
• 1:13:30
  college to focus on like ocean issues.
• 1:13:33
  And one when I was in college, one of the
• 1:13:36
  like big topics was marine spatial
• 1:13:38
  planning. This was in the during the Obama administration.
• 1:13:40
  Yes, yes. Marine spatial planning was
• 1:13:44
  this huge deal. And one of the big
• 1:13:46
  questions involved in marine spatial
• 1:13:47
  planning was, you know, how do you sort
• 1:13:49
  of optimize different human use of the
• 1:13:52
  oceans spatially so that you get these,
• 1:13:55
  you know, environmental and ecosystem
• 1:13:58
  benefits. One of them being that, you
• 1:14:02
  know, in California, for instance, we've
• 1:14:04
  got this network of marine protected
• 1:14:06
  areas that spans the whole state.
• 1:14:08
  This place we've set aside these places
• 1:14:11
  as being you, you know, you can't fish
• 1:14:13
  here, you can't do anything here. And
• 1:14:14
  some places you can do a little bit of
• 1:14:16
  fishing, but not commercial fishing. They
• 1:14:18
  have different sort of
• 1:14:19
  rules associated with them.
• 1:14:20
  But when the when that spatial plan was
• 1:14:23
  set up, one of the things that they took
• 1:14:25
  into consideration was where do we put
• 1:14:28
  these places so that the larvae that are
• 1:14:32
  produced by the populations of animals
• 1:14:35
  that live within these protected areas
• 1:14:37
  make connections between the protected
• 1:14:40
  areas and create this network effect of
• 1:14:42
  organisms moving between protected areas
• 1:14:46
  and from protected
• 1:14:47
  areas into fishable areas.
• 1:14:48
  So that was one of the big questions is
• 1:14:51
  how do you sort of optimally
• 1:14:53
  do marine spatial planning?
• 1:14:56
  Can I say something? Just to interrupt.
• 1:14:59
  So I did a Masters on marine conservation
• 1:15:02
  up in Nova Scotia. And one of the things
• 1:15:06
  was my Masters is more of like the GIS
• 1:15:08
  aspect like mapping out, not demersal
• 1:15:12
  fish, there was a
• 1:15:13
  biologist who demersal fish.
• 1:15:14
  But also I did macro invertebrates crabs,
• 1:15:18
  fish, shrimps, crab shrimps, lobster. And
• 1:15:21
  we were looking at like, what are the
• 1:15:24
  representative areas? Like what kind of
• 1:15:26
  assemblages are there? And so I did that.
• 1:15:28
  But my PhD was going to be if I did it
• 1:15:31
  was going to be on connectivity.
• 1:15:33
  So it was awesome. Yeah, for the for the
• 1:15:36
  Scotian shelf and Newfoundland. So, so
• 1:15:39
  cool. Yeah, yeah, I never ended up
• 1:15:41
  happening. But but that was that was on
• 1:15:43
  that was the direction. Yeah.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah. So that's that's exactly what I'm
• 1:15:46
  trying to describe here is basically like
• 1:15:48
  how does how does connectivity among
• 1:15:51
  spatial spatial plan
• 1:15:53
  work and how do you do that?
• 1:15:56
  So I was lucky enough to get connected to
• 1:16:00
  my graduate advisor, Stephen Morgan, who
• 1:16:03
  was doing exactly that kind
• 1:16:04
  of research that you gave us.
• 1:16:07
  And, yeah, I worked with him to do some
• 1:16:11
  collections across the shelf of larval
• 1:16:14
  fishes at a whole bunch of different
• 1:16:16
  depths and identify all of them and try
• 1:16:20
  to infer what what kind of behaviors they
• 1:16:22
  might be using to to
• 1:16:24
  move during their larval,
• 1:16:28
  during throughout their level stage.
• 1:16:29
  That's awesome. So you got to do field,
• 1:16:31
  you got to do laboratory work, you know,
• 1:16:33
  eyes in a microscope quite a bit, I
• 1:16:34
  assume. And then you got to do like the
• 1:16:36
  stat statistical analysis. That's a
• 1:16:38
  complete kind of PhD that love that. I
• 1:16:42
  love that. Yeah, I filled
• 1:16:43
  out the whole bingo card.
• 1:16:45
  Yeah, well, it's true. Not a lot of
• 1:16:47
  people did. Like when I did mine, I had
• 1:16:49
  like a database of multi year kind of
• 1:16:51
  data. So you didn't really have to do,
• 1:16:53
  you know, like the go out in the field. I
• 1:16:55
  had a lot of field experience before
• 1:16:56
  that. But but that. Yeah. So that's cool.
• 1:16:59
  You got to do. You got to do it all. I
• 1:17:01
  love that that aspect.
• 1:17:03
  And now you did you went for your PhD.
• 1:17:05
  Now some people do multiple postdocs. Did
• 1:17:08
  you do multiple or did you do one like
• 1:17:10
  where this paper came out? Like, yeah,
• 1:17:12
  this I did one postdoc. And then and then
• 1:17:16
  moved recently earlier this year into my
• 1:17:19
  new position with the Department of Fish
• 1:17:20
  and Wildlife, which is amazing. We'll
• 1:17:22
  talk about that. Just a second. That's
• 1:17:24
  awesome. Now the paper that you did was
• 1:17:27
  this were there like when you did the
• 1:17:29
  research that she did
• 1:17:30
  during your postdoc was this.
• 1:17:32
  One of the only papers or were there
• 1:17:34
  other papers that came out associated
• 1:17:36
  with this? Yeah, so there are multiple
• 1:17:40
  papers that came out of this study, which
• 1:17:43
  is a grant funded by the National Science
• 1:17:46
  Foundation to look to try to better
• 1:17:48
  understand seabirds broadly across all
• 1:17:52
  these different breeding sites around the world. Yeah.
• 1:17:54
  We have multiple papers. So this is the
• 1:17:57
  first paper of several that will come out
• 1:18:00
  on all those data sets. So it's like the
• 1:18:03
  introduction of what we're learning here.
• 1:18:05
  Now, I have to ask. And this might sound
• 1:18:09
  like an abrupt question. I don't mean to
• 1:18:10
  make a sound like that. Why should we
• 1:18:13
  care about seabirds? You know,
• 1:18:14
  everybody's always like, you know,
• 1:18:16
  everybody loves whales. Some people like
• 1:18:18
  birds. Some people don't. There's a
• 1:18:19
  there's a lot of there are a lot of
• 1:18:20
  people who don't like birds out there. Tell them what they're doing.
• 1:18:22
  There tell me why from from an ecosystem
• 1:18:25
  perspective, why people who are listening
• 1:18:27
  to this podcast scientists, non
• 1:18:29
  scientists, whoever should care about
• 1:18:31
  seabirds. Yeah, okay. Well, I'll give you
• 1:18:36
  three reasons to care about seabirds.
• 1:18:38
  Love it. So first of all, you know, I
• 1:18:43
  think most of our collective experience
• 1:18:45
  of seabirds certainly I grew up in
• 1:18:47
  Colorado and that's not by the coast at
• 1:18:49
  all. So my experience of seabirds was very limited.
• 1:18:51
  So my life. But we think about seabirds
• 1:18:55
  as basically being like seagulls on the
• 1:18:57
  beach trying to steal your sandwich or
• 1:18:59
  like rummaging through the dump or
• 1:19:01
  something like that. But even that little
• 1:19:06
  brief glimpse that we get of goals is a
• 1:19:09
  really limited picture of their amazing
• 1:19:12
  life history and their like the amazing
• 1:19:15
  ways that they spend their time and make their living in the world.
• 1:19:17
  So first reason that people should really
• 1:19:20
  care about seabirds is that seabirds are
• 1:19:24
  amazingly diverse. They make their living
• 1:19:26
  on the oceans in ways that are incredibly
• 1:19:29
  challenging and awe inspiring. They
• 1:19:32
  conduct migrations over, you know, across
• 1:19:35
  hemispheres over huge expanses. They mark
• 1:19:40
  the seasons in many cultures. There are
• 1:19:44
  societies and indigenous cultures that have a lot of different cultures.
• 1:19:46
  There are indigenous cultures that have
• 1:19:47
  lived off of seabirds seasonally. So
• 1:19:51
  there's a lot of amazing kind of just
• 1:19:53
  like awe inspiring reasons to be
• 1:19:56
  interested in seabirds.
• 1:19:58
  Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to
• 1:20:00
  interrupt. I feel like you mentioned the
• 1:20:02
  gulls and now I live just outside Toronto
• 1:20:04
  and you see gulls who are like, you know,
• 1:20:07
  they're they're living off of like
• 1:20:09
  garbage, you know, they're scavenging for
• 1:20:11
  food and they're kind of small.
• 1:20:14
  You know, some are gray and some like
• 1:20:15
  they don't look as nice and people are
• 1:20:17
  like all their garbage birds like around
• 1:20:18
  here. That's the law of times when you
• 1:20:20
  see and we see them so much, right? I
• 1:20:22
  recently went out to the west coast this
• 1:20:24
  past May to see a seagull that is from
• 1:20:31
  the west coast that literally lives off
• 1:20:32
  the ocean and like the fish
• 1:20:34
  and the food off the ocean.
• 1:20:35
  The size difference and the beauty is so
• 1:20:38
  different like the ones on the west coast
• 1:20:40
  and I've even been to the Arctic to and
• 1:20:42
  you see them in the Arctic and even on
• 1:20:43
  the east coast like anywhere near the
• 1:20:44
  ocean. They're big,
• 1:20:45
  they're cleaner, they're fuller.
• 1:20:48
  They're like the difference is like I
• 1:20:49
  don't even know I would love to see a
• 1:20:51
  study of like what the weight differences
• 1:20:52
  and if it's different like different
• 1:20:53
  types of species, but it is night and day
• 1:20:56
  when you see that. So even seagulls that
• 1:20:58
  were very used to, we kind of consider
• 1:21:00
  them as like
• 1:21:01
  scavengers and garbage birds.
• 1:21:03
  There are gorgeous along the coast. Yeah,
• 1:21:05
  it's a difference. You know what I mean?
• 1:21:08
  It's really, it's always really exciting
• 1:21:10
  to me to see an animal in the environment
• 1:21:12
  that it was evolved to, you know, be in.
• 1:21:17
  It's amazing to see that and that
• 1:21:19
  includes goals that we associate with.
• 1:21:21
  Yeah, it's kind of like dirty gross pest
• 1:21:24
  behaviors, but yeah, but you know,
• 1:21:28
  thinking beyond goals like, you know,
• 1:21:30
  there's albatross, there's shearwaters,
• 1:21:32
  there's all kinds of amazing, you know,
• 1:21:35
  there's these tiny little petrels that
• 1:21:37
  dance on the surface of the water and
• 1:21:39
  grab that little zooplankton.
• 1:21:41
  Like there's this huge diversity of birds
• 1:21:44
  out there. And I think that's something
• 1:21:47
  that, you know, many of us just kind of
• 1:21:49
  like miss out on. So they're worth caring
• 1:21:51
  about intrinsically. Yes.
• 1:21:53
  And maybe I'll just make like a little
• 1:21:56
  pitch to folks listening to the podcast
• 1:22:00
  we have if you go to
• 1:22:02
  ferrallandinstitute.org, there's a little
• 1:22:04
  banner at the top that directs people to
• 1:22:06
  seabirds.ferrallandinstitute.org.
• 1:22:09
  And if you go to that page, you can have
• 1:22:13
  a look at a huge diversity of seabirds
• 1:22:16
  and spend a little bit of time learning
• 1:22:18
  about their life history, their the way
• 1:22:22
  that they breed, where they're located,
• 1:22:24
  who studies them and and kind of dig into
• 1:22:27
  all of that. If you
• 1:22:27
  find that interesting.
• 1:22:29
  We are going to link to it. I just I just
• 1:22:30
  I just clicked on it. And it's like an
• 1:22:32
  interactive site to find it. This is
• 1:22:34
  awesome. Yeah, we're I'm gonna I'll link
• 1:22:36
  to it in the show notes so people can
• 1:22:37
  take a look. This is definitely something that I'm going to do.
• 1:22:38
  This is definitely something you should
• 1:22:39
  take a look at that first image of
• 1:22:41
  seabirds diving in to get the fish is
• 1:22:45
  pretty cool like diving into the ocean is
• 1:22:48
  very, very cool. Yeah, this is awesome.
• 1:22:50
  Now let's talk let's
• 1:22:51
  talk about the paper.
• 1:22:52
  This is this is an important paper that
• 1:22:54
  came out nature communications, or it's
• 1:22:57
  an environment called ecosystems mediate
• 1:22:59
  climate impacts on northern hemisphere
• 1:23:02
  seabirds. So looking at
• 1:23:04
  climate impacts on seabirds.
• 1:23:06
  Can we talk just a little bit of how this
• 1:23:09
  paper kind of came into existence like
• 1:23:11
  the idea of it was it based off of what
• 1:23:13
  you guys were like, was it a plan thing?
• 1:23:16
  You know, as you go through the grant and
• 1:23:18
  you're doing all these studies, you're
• 1:23:19
  taking all these
• 1:23:20
  measurements, are we looking like
• 1:23:21
  how like we're gonna look at how climb is
• 1:23:24
  looking at seabirds, but different
• 1:23:25
  populations in the Pacific in the North
• 1:23:28
  Atlantic and in the South Atlantic. I
• 1:23:30
  mean, that's a big thing to do. How did
• 1:23:33
  this whole idea kind of come into play?
• 1:23:35
  Yeah. Good question. So I'll kind of wrap
• 1:23:39
  that together with reasons two and three
• 1:23:44
  that you should care about seabirds are
• 1:23:46
  and it's kind of like the intro to that
• 1:23:48
  next question. Yeah.
• 1:23:51
  So one of the things that seabird
• 1:23:54
  researchers and marine researchers in
• 1:23:56
  general have learned is that you can get
• 1:23:58
  a lot of information about the health of
• 1:24:00
  the ocean by looking at top predators and
• 1:24:03
  how top predators are faring.
• 1:24:06
  Seabirds are often considered to be
• 1:24:09
  sentinel species in that they're kind of
• 1:24:13
  like the canaries in the coal mine of an
• 1:24:15
  ecosystem. We can look to seabirds and
• 1:24:20
  their performance on a number of
• 1:24:22
  different metrics to try to understand
• 1:24:24
  how the rest of the ecosystem is doing.
• 1:24:27
  And it's a little easier to look at
• 1:24:29
  seabirds because they're above the ocean.
• 1:24:31
  You can go to a colony and count them.
• 1:24:34
  You can pick up their chicks and measure
• 1:24:36
  how fat they are and see what they're
• 1:24:38
  eating and all kinds of those kinds of
• 1:24:40
  things. So sentinel seabirds are this
• 1:24:44
  really uniquely useful sentinel species
• 1:24:48
  group of species to understand how the
• 1:24:51
  ocean is doing and how it's changing and
• 1:24:54
  how ecosystems are responding to climate.
• 1:24:57
  So back in 2021, Bill Seidman and other
• 1:25:02
  colleagues at the Farallon Institute
• 1:25:03
  published this paper in science where
• 1:25:07
  they looked at hemispheric asymmetry in
• 1:25:11
  the breeding productivity
• 1:25:12
  of seabirds around the world.
• 1:25:15
  So in an earlier version of the data set
• 1:25:16
  that's published in this paper that we're
• 1:25:19
  talking about today, what they found is
• 1:25:22
  that seabirds in the northern hemisphere,
• 1:25:25
  their breeding productivity and their
• 1:25:27
  probability of breeding failure.
• 1:25:30
  Well, I guess I should say, their
• 1:25:33
  breeding productivity is in decline and
• 1:25:35
  the probability of breeding failure is
• 1:25:37
  going up in the northern hemisphere
• 1:25:39
  faster than in the southern hemisphere.
• 1:25:42
  Interesting. And they, you know, they
• 1:25:43
  suggested a lot of reasons for why that
• 1:25:45
  might be happening. This paper is kind of
• 1:25:49
  a follow up where we've expanded the
• 1:25:51
  number of time series that we look at.
• 1:25:54
  And we instead of looking at hemispheric
• 1:25:57
  asymmetry, we sort of zoom in on, you
• 1:25:59
  know, are there particular ecosystems
• 1:26:01
  throughout the northern hemisphere where
• 1:26:02
  birds are feeling better than others or
• 1:26:05
  worse than others and why, why might that
• 1:26:08
  be what might be driving that?
• 1:26:09
  Interesting. So the first so the first
• 1:26:12
  paper figured out that something's going
• 1:26:14
  on within the hemispheres, then you guys
• 1:26:17
  dove deeper into the hemisphere where
• 1:26:20
  they're like the north, the North
• 1:26:21
  Atlantic like that, that area and the
• 1:26:24
  Pacific where they
• 1:26:25
  weren't doing as well. Is that?
• 1:26:27
  Yeah, we were looking to understand, you
• 1:26:29
  know, at a finer scale than just north
• 1:26:32
  versus south. Right. Can we look at these
• 1:26:34
  different ocean basins
• 1:26:36
  and start to see patterns?
• 1:26:37
  In that sense, I'm putting my science hat
• 1:26:41
  on here in that sense. Are you looking at
• 1:26:43
  the same bird species across different
• 1:26:46
  habitats? Is that what you're looking at?
• 1:26:50
  Yeah, so that's another one of the things
• 1:26:52
  that makes this this paper and the
• 1:26:55
  earlier one so exciting is that we have
• 1:26:58
  100 in this this most recent version,
• 1:27:01
  we've got 138 data sets
• 1:27:03
  from the northern hemisphere.
• 1:27:04
  And more than that, if you include the
• 1:27:08
  southern hemisphere where we also have
• 1:27:09
  data and there's going to be research
• 1:27:11
  published on that pretty soon. But just
• 1:27:14
  looking at the northern hemisphere 138
• 1:27:16
  data sets time series of birds doing
• 1:27:18
  better or worse every year.
• 1:27:20
  And that represents 39 species. Okay.
• 1:27:28
  And that's the most exciting thing about the data.
• 1:27:29
  That's right.
• 1:27:29
  Yeah, it's this huge resource to pull
• 1:27:34
  information out of and that's one of the
• 1:27:36
  most exciting things about the data.
• 1:27:38
  Well, I should say too is like for the
• 1:27:40
  audience members like normally when you
• 1:27:42
  get a data set, it's five years, four or
• 1:27:45
  five years, three years if you're lucky
• 1:27:46
  because it costs a lot of money to do
• 1:27:47
  these monitoring programs to get
• 1:27:49
  something that expands over decades.
• 1:27:51
  It's super exciting for researchers to
• 1:27:55
  have like that is that's like getting
• 1:27:57
  like a sugary cereal every once in a
• 1:27:59
  while. You get it? You're like, this is
• 1:28:00
  awesome. Like this is this is really
• 1:28:02
  good. We'll get a lot of data out of
• 1:28:03
  this. You know what I mean?
• 1:28:04
  Yeah, totally. I and I think like, you
• 1:28:07
  know, that highlights another one of the
• 1:28:09
  parts of this whole experience that I
• 1:28:12
  have loved the most is for this paper, we
• 1:28:14
  have 56 different authors and they're
• 1:28:17
  from 12 countries
• 1:28:19
  throughout the northern hemisphere.
• 1:28:20
  So like this huge data set has been the
• 1:28:26
  product of scientists all over the world
• 1:28:29
  going out to these tiny islands or these
• 1:28:32
  remote places and spending their years of
• 1:28:36
  their life monitoring these
• 1:28:38
  particular seabird colonies.
• 1:28:40
  And so, you know, again, if you go to
• 1:28:43
  that website, you scroll all the way to
• 1:28:44
  the bottom, you can see field notes
• 1:28:46
  stories from the field of these these
• 1:28:48
  different places around the world and get
• 1:28:50
  a sense for what it's like to be a
• 1:28:51
  seabird researcher on these far places.
• 1:28:54
  And sometimes like in the middle of the
• 1:28:57
  ocean where thousands of miles from the
• 1:28:59
  nearest person. Oh, yeah.
• 1:29:02
  And so all of that is kind of brought
• 1:29:03
  together to help tell us about what's
• 1:29:05
  going on throughout the northern
• 1:29:06
  hemisphere throughout the world.
• 1:29:08
  But I think it's a it's really a
• 1:29:10
  celebration of of all the hard one data
• 1:29:14
  that these people all around the world,
• 1:29:16
  these people who really care about
• 1:29:18
  seabirds care about the health of our
• 1:29:19
  oceans have been able to bring together.
• 1:29:22
  It's incredible. Like this site is
• 1:29:24
  incredible, too. Like you've got like all
• 1:29:26
  the data on each on each of the the birds
• 1:29:29
  and you know, you got all the data in
• 1:29:32
  there. You look at the field sites and
• 1:29:34
  stuff. This is really, really cool.
• 1:29:37
  We don't see this often from from like
• 1:29:39
  like a big project like this really
• 1:29:41
  showing, you know, everything that's
• 1:29:43
  going on, even having like field notes,
• 1:29:45
  you know, to to get people's ideas of
• 1:29:48
  what's happening and what they're going
• 1:29:49
  through and what they're experiencing in
• 1:29:51
  different parts of the
• 1:29:51
  world and what they're seeing.
• 1:29:53
  I just think that's that's incredible.
• 1:29:55
  It's a really great piece. Whoever put
• 1:29:57
  this together. I guess it's the Fairland
• 1:29:59
  Institute, but unreal to be able to do
• 1:30:02
  this. This is this is
• 1:30:03
  really exciting to to have this.
• 1:30:06
  How did did your lab get to be
• 1:30:09
  a part of this whole project?
• 1:30:13
  Yeah, well, that's really that's an
• 1:30:15
  effort that's been led by my postdoc
• 1:30:17
  supervisor, Bill Seidenen, who founded
• 1:30:21
  the Fairland Institute. He is a like
• 1:30:25
  eminent seabird researcher.
• 1:30:28
  He's done, you know, done an enormous
• 1:30:31
  amount of work on seabirds throughout his
• 1:30:33
  career and has these connections all
• 1:30:35
  around the world of people who have
• 1:30:37
  monitored different locations. Yeah.
• 1:30:41
  Bill himself has been heavily involved in
• 1:30:44
  monitoring off the California coast,
• 1:30:46
  including the at the Farallon Islands.
• 1:30:49
  But, you know, he's he's one of many
• 1:30:51
  seabird researchers who are
• 1:30:53
  in all these different places.
• 1:30:54
  And I think he and and others who have
• 1:30:59
  published meta analysis in recent years
• 1:31:01
  saw the need for this kind of integrative
• 1:31:04
  knowledge, this the synthesis of, okay,
• 1:31:09
  we know this is happening here. We think
• 1:31:10
  it's due to climate.
• 1:31:11
  We know this is happening here. We think
• 1:31:12
  it's due to climate. What what can we see
• 1:31:15
  and learn differently if we bring all
• 1:31:17
  that information
• 1:31:17
  together to get the big picture.
• 1:31:19
  Amazing. So this first paper that comes
• 1:31:22
  out really exciting has some pretty
• 1:31:25
  alarming things that that were observed
• 1:31:29
  and that were that were revealed within
• 1:31:31
  this paper. Can you just kind of talk a
• 1:31:33
  little bit about some of those results? I
• 1:31:35
  just mentioned that we'll
• 1:31:35
  dive deeper into into each one.
• 1:31:37
  Yeah, yeah, sure. So I'll kind of walk
• 1:31:43
  through some of the key findings. So what
• 1:31:46
  we sought out to do is, you know, we've
• 1:31:48
  got all this data from throughout the
• 1:31:50
  northern hemisphere, we broke it up into
• 1:31:52
  seven different major ecosystems. So
• 1:31:54
  places like the Northwest Atlantic, you
• 1:31:58
  think like the eastern seaboard of the US
• 1:32:00
  into Canada, the northern your northern
• 1:32:04
  European seas, which is, you know, the northern sea.
• 1:32:05
  The northern European seas, which is, you
• 1:32:06
  know, the north sea and sort of areas of
• 1:32:09
  northern Europe. The, the Northeast
• 1:32:13
  Pacific, including both the cold
• 1:32:17
  temperate areas and the warmer areas off
• 1:32:19
  of Baja Hawaii, the Arctic and then parts
• 1:32:23
  of the western side of the Pacific off
• 1:32:26
  of, you know, Korea, Japan, China.
• 1:32:30
  And so we looked at the different
• 1:32:30
  ecosystems around the world. And what we
• 1:32:33
  did was we looked at how our seabirds
• 1:32:37
  doing in each of these ecosystems through
• 1:32:40
  time, knowing that the climate is
• 1:32:43
  changing and that ecosystem responses to
• 1:32:49
  climate change and the rate of climate
• 1:32:53
  change. So, you know, the northern Europe
• 1:32:55
  may be doing one thing and the Pacific
• 1:32:57
  may be doing another thing. A lot of that
• 1:33:00
  has to do with things like, you know,
• 1:33:02
  here in off of California and in the
• 1:33:04
  Northeast Pacific, the rhythms of the
• 1:33:06
  ecosystem are really driven by things
• 1:33:08
  like El Nino and factors like that.
• 1:33:12
  Whereas those features may not be as
• 1:33:14
  important in other parts of the world.
• 1:33:17
  So the ecosystems are sort of structured
• 1:33:18
  differently in different places, but we
• 1:33:20
  know the climate is changing. So what
• 1:33:22
  does all this mean for top predators? And
• 1:33:26
  we chose to look at one specific metric,
• 1:33:29
  which is seabird breeding productivity,
• 1:33:31
  or the number of chicks fledged per
• 1:33:35
  female per year at each breeding colony.
• 1:33:39
  And the reason we chose to look at that
• 1:33:40
  is because that is one metric that is
• 1:33:42
  reliably and consistently measured across
• 1:33:46
  many seabird colonies all around the
• 1:33:48
  world. So you're looking at the data sets
• 1:33:50
  and that's what they
• 1:33:51
  pretty much measure. Yeah. Okay.
• 1:33:53
  Yeah. So they reliably, you know, it's
• 1:33:55
  measured kind of the same way everywhere
• 1:33:56
  you go. It's something that's like in
• 1:33:59
  the, you know, first step in the manual.
• 1:34:02
  Yeah. Each of these colonies, like they
• 1:34:03
  get that data. Yeah.
• 1:34:05
  And the other thing is that it tells us
• 1:34:06
  about the population dynamics going
• 1:34:08
  forward. It's not just what did they eat
• 1:34:12
  this year? It's like how many chicks are
• 1:34:13
  they producing? What does that mean for
• 1:34:14
  the population in the future? It's a bit
• 1:34:16
  of a predictor. It's a
• 1:34:17
  bit of a predictor. Yeah.
• 1:34:19
  So we also used data from about sort of
• 1:34:26
  ocean conditions in each of these seven
• 1:34:29
  different ecosystems. And unsurprisingly,
• 1:34:31
  using this, looking at the environment,
• 1:34:35
  we found that it's warming everywhere.
• 1:34:37
  Right. If you kind of know that it's
• 1:34:39
  warming everywhere throughout the northern hemisphere. Yeah.
• 1:34:41
  Looking back across decades of records.
• 1:34:47
  But we found that, you know, at a
• 1:34:49
  community level, like many species of
• 1:34:51
  seabirds living in all these different
• 1:34:53
  places at a big scale. We're not seeing
• 1:34:57
  seabirds just like nose diving in terms
• 1:35:00
  of their breeding
• 1:35:00
  productivity across all seven ecosystems.
• 1:35:03
  We're seeing that we're seeing declines.
• 1:35:06
  It's statistically significant declines
• 1:35:09
  in the breeding productivity of seabirds
• 1:35:12
  in the Northwest Atlantic, in the Arctic
• 1:35:15
  and in Northern Europe. That's where
• 1:35:18
  we're seeing statistically significant
• 1:35:21
  declines in breeding
• 1:35:22
  productivity of seabirds.
• 1:35:25
  And when you say Northern Europe, is this
• 1:35:26
  still on the Atlantic side or is that
• 1:35:28
  like in the North? Yeah, North. It's the
• 1:35:30
  North Atlantic. Like, yeah.
• 1:35:32
  Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So so we're seeing
• 1:35:37
  these three ecosystems where seabird
• 1:35:39
  productivity is declining. Like there are
• 1:35:41
  fewer babies per year. And we can see
• 1:35:44
  that in the data going back decades.
• 1:35:47
  We're not seeing that, though, is in
• 1:35:52
  places like in Hawaii and in the
• 1:35:54
  Northwest Pacific and in the Northeast
• 1:35:57
  Pacific. So basically, all of the
• 1:35:59
  Pacific, North Pacific, we're seeing more
• 1:36:03
  stability in the
• 1:36:05
  breeding productivity trends.
• 1:36:08
  And that's in spite of sort
• 1:36:09
  of ubiquitous warming. Right.
• 1:36:12
  And one of the reasons why we might think
• 1:36:14
  for these things to be linked is that,
• 1:36:17
  you know, if you get warming seas, you
• 1:36:20
  get changing food conditions, like as
• 1:36:23
  things warm up, the phytoplankton
• 1:36:26
  changes. You might get phytoplankton
• 1:36:28
  later in the year or earlier in the year.
• 1:36:30
  It's mismatched in terms of its time with
• 1:36:33
  the zooplankton, with the forage fish,
• 1:36:35
  and then there's less available for the
• 1:36:37
  top predators. Right. Right.
• 1:36:39
  And it could have also move, like shifted
• 1:36:42
  based on currents, too. Yeah. Yep. You
• 1:36:44
  could see it. Yeah. So we kind of
• 1:36:46
  actually, we can kind of bundle all of
• 1:36:48
  that together. And we sort of expect that
• 1:36:50
  with warming conditions and climate
• 1:36:52
  change, we expect to see this either
• 1:36:54
  spatial or temporal mismatch between prey
• 1:36:58
  and predators. Right.
• 1:37:01
  And that's something we can broadly
• 1:37:02
  expect to be the case across a lot of
• 1:37:04
  ecosystems, but we're seeing more
• 1:37:06
  stability in the Pacific across these
• 1:37:09
  decades of of seabird breeding
• 1:37:10
  productivity records than we're seeing in
• 1:37:13
  the North Atlantic in the Arctic where
• 1:37:14
  we're seeing, okay, yeah, seabirds are in
• 1:37:17
  decline in these places for sure.
• 1:37:21
  So that that's one of so it's, you know,
• 1:37:23
  it's warming everywhere. We're seeing
• 1:37:25
  seabird breeding productivity decline in
• 1:37:27
  some places, but not everywhere. Yeah.
• 1:37:29
  Another key finding was that in places
• 1:37:33
  where we see that the we're seeing a
• 1:37:37
  stronger link between warming and and
• 1:37:41
  other climate change metrics during the
• 1:37:43
  prebreeding season, then during other
• 1:37:46
  parts of the year. So one important thing
• 1:37:51
  to know here is that when seabirds breed,
• 1:37:53
  they come back to a
• 1:37:54
  colony to breed, right?
• 1:37:56
  They don't just kind of like breed
• 1:37:58
  wherever they are. They all come back to
• 1:38:00
  one location. They find their partner,
• 1:38:03
  they lay an egg, and they they raise that
• 1:38:06
  egg until it fludges.
• 1:38:08
  The period of time from when the seabirds
• 1:38:13
  arrive at the colony to when that egg
• 1:38:15
  hatches conditions during that period
• 1:38:18
  seem to be really important for
• 1:38:20
  determining breeding success across
• 1:38:23
  ecosystems, including those ecosystems
• 1:38:26
  where we see greater
• 1:38:27
  stability in the Pacific.
• 1:38:31
  So, for example, you know, years where
• 1:38:35
  it's warm in the in the Northeast Pacific
• 1:38:37
  and in the Arctic, we see during the
• 1:38:40
  prebreeding season in particular, we see
• 1:38:42
  a decline in breeding success.
• 1:38:45
  When waters are more stratified in the
• 1:38:47
  Northwest Atlantic during the prebreeding
• 1:38:50
  season, we see a bigger decline, a market
• 1:38:53
  decline in the seabird
• 1:38:54
  breeding productivity.
• 1:38:55
  So that like early part of their breeding
• 1:38:58
  season is kind of this critical period
• 1:39:00
  for determining the ultimate success. And
• 1:39:02
  just if you can just define
• 1:39:04
  stratification just for those who are not
• 1:39:06
  familiar with that term.
• 1:39:08
  Yeah. So, you know, if you picture like a
• 1:39:11
  whole water column from the surface down
• 1:39:14
  to the very bottom. Stratification is a
• 1:39:17
  term that we use to to describe how
• 1:39:21
  layered that water is.
• 1:39:22
  So if you're like back in your high
• 1:39:25
  school science class and you're putting
• 1:39:27
  vinegar on top of oil, they split, right?
• 1:39:31
  Yeah, you've got the vinegar sitting on
• 1:39:33
  the oil sitting on top and
• 1:39:35
  the vinegar on the bottom.
• 1:39:36
  Mm hmm. So you get less dense solutions
• 1:39:40
  sit on top of more dense solutions. The
• 1:39:43
  same thing happens in the ocean. Dense,
• 1:39:46
  cold, salty water sits at the bottom and
• 1:39:50
  warm, lighter, fresher
• 1:39:52
  water sits at the top.
• 1:39:55
  Unless you get mixing, right? And if the
• 1:39:57
  water column gets mixed by storms or
• 1:39:59
  winds, then you can you kind of like
• 1:40:01
  shake up that solid dressing or whatever.
• 1:40:03
  Yep. But we expect, you know, we can see
• 1:40:06
  that stratification is more pronounced is
• 1:40:10
  the water columns more layered when the
• 1:40:13
  surface layer warms.
• 1:40:15
  Right. So if it's getting warmer at the
• 1:40:17
  surface and, you know, this is one of the
• 1:40:20
  things that we expect to be a byproduct
• 1:40:22
  of climate change as the world warms, we
• 1:40:24
  expect the surface water to warm very
• 1:40:25
  quickly and it increases this resistance
• 1:40:30
  to mixing throughout the water column.
• 1:40:33
  And so we call that we we expect to see
• 1:40:35
  greater stratification through time with
• 1:40:37
  climate change. And there have been some
• 1:40:39
  really great papers looking at
• 1:40:41
  stratification trends around the world
• 1:40:44
  that have shown that across ocean basins,
• 1:40:46
  we are seeing a tendency
• 1:40:48
  for greater stratification.
• 1:40:51
  And so this for stratification, why would
• 1:40:53
  that matter for that period, you know,
• 1:40:56
  pre colony, like before the colony to,
• 1:40:59
  you know, basically the fledgling come
• 1:41:01
  out? Yeah. So there's a lot of different
• 1:41:04
  ways or there's several different ways
• 1:41:06
  that stratification could impact
• 1:41:07
  seabirds, including
• 1:41:09
  during the pre breeding season.
• 1:41:12
  So for instance, you know, if you can
• 1:41:15
  picture kind of like warmer and colder
• 1:41:17
  water sitting separate to each other, you
• 1:41:20
  might see different fish species living
• 1:41:24
  in those different parts of the water
• 1:41:25
  column or different zooplankton living in
• 1:41:27
  the different parts of the water column.
• 1:41:30
  So if you've got if you're the view
• 1:41:32
  really if you're from a seabirds point of
• 1:41:33
  view, you really want to get the stuff
• 1:41:35
  that's in the cold salty deeper water, a
• 1:41:39
  very thick stratified layer warm layer at
• 1:41:42
  the top is going to make it harder for
• 1:41:44
  you to get down and get
• 1:41:45
  those course those fish.
• 1:41:48
  Yeah. So that's one one way that it could.
• 1:41:52
  And I think that to expand on that, going
• 1:41:53
  back to my master's degree, one of the
• 1:41:56
  things I found so you know, you're
• 1:41:57
  looking at the North Atlantic, you're
• 1:41:59
  very it's very influenced by the Gulf
• 1:42:01
  Stream that comes up, you know, just
• 1:42:03
  outside of Nova Scotia.
• 1:42:06
  And I remember every once in a while
• 1:42:07
  you'll get these eddies that come off of
• 1:42:08
  the Gulf Stream, you know, go into off
• 1:42:10
  the the Scotian shelf.
• 1:42:30
  You know, you get that warm water, right?
• 1:42:31
  And then you get that dense cold water on
• 1:42:34
  the on the bottom, as if that's what kind
• 1:42:36
  of makes that that loop go across that we
• 1:42:38
  hear so much the North Atlantic loop.
• 1:42:40
  It's just yeah, it's just a very
• 1:42:41
  interesting. That's what made it think
• 1:42:42
  that made me think about it. You look at
• 1:42:44
  that stratification. That gets more and
• 1:42:46
  more stratified. You're looking at some
• 1:42:47
  problems there. Yeah.
• 1:42:50
  Like that, that gradient between, you
• 1:42:54
  know, dense and lighter water is part of
• 1:42:59
  what drives these like vast ocean
• 1:43:01
  throughout the whole world.
• 1:43:05
  And so, you know, like thinking like
• 1:43:05
  really close to a colony or something
• 1:43:08
  stratification could impact the kinds of
• 1:43:11
  prey that's available. It could also
• 1:43:13
  impact, you know, the water quality,
• 1:43:16
  maybe the lighter, fresher water is more
• 1:43:19
  or less clear making it easier or harder
• 1:43:23
  for a diving seabird to
• 1:43:25
  visually track its prey.
• 1:43:29
  And so, you know, the other thing that
• 1:43:35
  you kind of think might be going on in
• 1:43:37
  the Northwest Atlantic where we're seeing
• 1:43:39
  that relationship between stratification
• 1:43:41
  and breeding productivity is period years
• 1:43:45
  where there have been where there has
• 1:43:48
  been greater stratification are linked to
• 1:43:50
  one type of sort of ecosystem
• 1:43:52
  productivity like zooplankton and
• 1:43:55
  phytoplankton community.
• 1:43:57
  And so, you know, there's a lot of things that are going on in the Northwest Atlantic that are going to be a little bit more
• 1:43:57
  than in years where there's, you know,
• 1:44:00
  lower stratification. Right. And I think
• 1:44:03
  a lot of that has, you know, not being
• 1:44:05
  from the Northwest Atlantic and not
• 1:44:07
  knowing that system as well. A lot of
• 1:44:10
  that is driven by like freshwater inputs
• 1:44:11
  and it really changes the structure of
• 1:44:16
  the lower trophic levels of the
• 1:44:18
  community, which seabirds then like
• 1:44:20
  predate upon to feed their chicks.
• 1:44:23
  Yeah, yeah. That's, that's, it's pretty
• 1:44:26
  heavy to really think about this now.
• 1:44:28
  Now, how much is it affecting like you're
• 1:44:31
  talking about the sort of the breeding
• 1:44:32
  capabilities, like how much of a decline
• 1:44:35
  are we seeing over the end and how fast
• 1:44:37
  are we seeing is it is it speeding up or
• 1:44:41
  is it still like a slow process?
• 1:44:45
  Yeah, it is. Well, it's a slow process,
• 1:44:50
  but it's still very remarkable that it's
• 1:44:54
  even detectable because we're talking
• 1:44:57
  about like, you know, dozens of species
• 1:45:01
  in these different systems. And you would
• 1:45:03
  think that like, okay, one might be doing
• 1:45:05
  better with climate
• 1:45:05
  change, one might be doing worse.
• 1:45:07
  But in aggregate, we're seeing a
• 1:45:10
  statistically significant decline. And,
• 1:45:14
  you know, we tried to kind of create
• 1:45:16
  decades scale trends or estimates for how
• 1:45:20
  fast it's happening. And it across the
• 1:45:23
  different ecosystems, we're seeing
• 1:45:24
  declines, it's like from six to 11% per
• 1:45:27
  decade into in a decline in seabird
• 1:45:30
  breeding productivity, based
• 1:45:32
  on compared to the baseline.
• 1:45:34
  Right. And that's pretty remarkable. Like, you
• 1:45:36
  know, if you fast forward decades out
• 1:45:40
  that that's clearly an issue. And it
• 1:45:44
  going back to the Pacific for a second,
• 1:45:46
  where we've been talking about, okay,
• 1:45:48
  it's a little bit more stable. We're not
• 1:45:50
  seeing a record of decline.
• 1:45:52
  We're very concerned about the fact that
• 1:45:55
  we may not see a decline yet, but we
• 1:45:58
  could very well reach tipping points
• 1:46:01
  where we start to see really marked
• 1:46:04
  declines. And we've seen that in recent
• 1:46:07
  years, like, you know, 2014 through 2016,
• 1:46:10
  we had this huge heat wave that affected
• 1:46:14
  their whole northeast Pacific.
• 1:46:15
  It was called the blob. Yeah, right. So
• 1:46:19
  that story, one of one of the things that
• 1:46:21
  happened during the blob, John Piot, a
• 1:46:25
  really great seabird researcher,
• 1:46:28
  published this paper documenting that,
• 1:46:30
  like half a million to over a million
• 1:46:32
  common mers died, presumably of
• 1:46:35
  starvation during the blob.
• 1:46:38
  And that was in the north northeast
• 1:46:40
  Pacific, where we're saying that breeding
• 1:46:42
  success is kind of like stable. Right.
• 1:46:45
  But in recent years, we're seeing these
• 1:46:46
  like crazy things happen. And there's not
• 1:46:48
  been as much of a record of recovery in
• 1:46:50
  years since since the blob
• 1:46:52
  for the common population.
• 1:46:53
  So it's very like, it's very possible
• 1:46:57
  that in in the near future, we could
• 1:46:59
  start to see even these stable ecosystems
• 1:47:01
  take a decline. Yeah, I think that's
• 1:47:04
  interesting observation, where you're
• 1:47:06
  looking because we've seen this happen.
• 1:47:07
  And other systems where you don't notice
• 1:47:11
  it, you know, as a steady decline, but
• 1:47:13
  then all of a sudden, you know,
• 1:47:15
  population crashes or something happens,
• 1:47:18
  you know, we don't know what's what's
• 1:47:20
  going to happen if we
• 1:47:21
  keep losing the prey.
• 1:47:23
  And we keep seeing changes or changes in
• 1:47:24
  the prey and changes in distribution of
• 1:47:26
  that prey. So that that becomes a very
• 1:47:29
  like it's almost like is that the
• 1:47:31
  question is the North Atlantic becoming a predictor for the Pacific.
• 1:47:33
  Yeah, right. Right. That's the that's
• 1:47:37
  what I that's what I'm kind of getting
• 1:47:38
  out of it. I'm like, oh, gosh, is this
• 1:47:40
  something that we have to be careful of,
• 1:47:44
  you know, in the in the Pacific because
• 1:47:45
  we don't want to we obviously want to
• 1:47:46
  help in the North Atlantic,
• 1:47:47
  which we'll get to in a bit.
• 1:47:49
  But then, you know, we look at the
• 1:47:51
  Pacific and it might be going through the
• 1:47:52
  precursor of these declines. I think that
• 1:47:56
  that's, you know, potentially fair to say
• 1:47:59
  that these these regions where we're seeing.
• 1:48:02
  Marked declines in breeding productivity
• 1:48:05
  could very easily be in the future for
• 1:48:08
  places where it's
• 1:48:08
  currently stable. Right.
• 1:48:12
  Now, I know there were other with their
• 1:48:13
  other observations. I know that was like
• 1:48:14
  the like a big one, obviously. Were there
• 1:48:17
  other observations that you found like
• 1:48:19
  other key findings? Yeah. So another
• 1:48:21
  thing that we were really interested in
• 1:48:23
  is like, okay, so stepping back some
• 1:48:26
  places, seabirds are in decline. Some
• 1:48:28
  places their productivity is more stable.
• 1:48:29
  Why is that? Yeah, what's causing that?
• 1:48:37
  We know that these, like I said before,
• 1:48:40
  like these ecosystems are structured
• 1:48:41
  differently. Some of them are driven by
• 1:48:44
  multi decadal trends. Some of them may be
• 1:48:46
  driven by freshwater input. Some of them
• 1:48:48
  may be driven by fishing impacts or
• 1:48:50
  something like that. You know, they're
• 1:48:52
  different in many ways. But is there some
• 1:48:55
  sort of factor that can easily easily be driven by freshwater impacts?
• 1:48:57
  Can easily easily explain these
• 1:49:00
  differences in seabird breeding
• 1:49:02
  productivity trends. And one of the
• 1:49:05
  things that we looked at was just what's
• 1:49:07
  the prey composition look like across
• 1:49:10
  these different ecosystems, knowing that
• 1:49:13
  having food to feed your yourself as a
• 1:49:17
  seabird parent and precondition your body
• 1:49:20
  for a successful reproductive cycle.
• 1:49:23
  And having the food to be able to feed
• 1:49:25
  your chicks so that they can successfully
• 1:49:28
  fledge and make it through their first
• 1:49:30
  year. That's critically important. We
• 1:49:33
  know the prey is super
• 1:49:33
  important during this period.
• 1:49:35
  So we we did a deep dive into documenting
• 1:49:42
  what are the top types of prey for each
• 1:49:46
  colony, each bird at each colony across
• 1:49:49
  all 138 data sets. And when we compare
• 1:49:55
  the prey community that is relied upon
• 1:49:59
  across these different
• 1:50:00
  seven ecosystems, we saw that
• 1:50:03
  the northern the North Atlantic, the
• 1:50:07
  Northwest Atlantic, the northern European
• 1:50:09
  seas and the Arctic tend to have lower
• 1:50:11
  prey diversity compared to the Pacific
• 1:50:15
  where we see sort of more more diverse
• 1:50:18
  prey on which seabirds are relying.
• 1:50:20
  And we that's kind of important to know
• 1:50:25
  because if if we're seeing like, okay,
• 1:50:28
  these places where we've got a lot of
• 1:50:29
  diverse prey where seabirds have a
• 1:50:31
  portfolio of options to potentially
• 1:50:33
  choose from potentially prey switching within a particular species.
• 1:50:36
  Something about having a really diverse
• 1:50:42
  prey available makes that that ecosystem
• 1:50:47
  less vulnerable to sort of shift climate
• 1:50:50
  induced shifts at the predator level. In
• 1:50:54
  places like northern Europe where there's
• 1:50:56
  much, you know, seabirds are relying on
• 1:50:58
  all the same couple species to support their colonies.
• 1:51:00
  Yeah. In particular, you know, sand lance
• 1:51:04
  is one one forage fish that we see being
• 1:51:09
  like, really important for many for many
• 1:51:14
  seabirds species. When sand lance goes
• 1:51:17
  down, then that affects a lot of
• 1:51:19
  different northern European seabirds. So
• 1:51:21
  there's this one link in
• 1:51:22
  the chain being pulled up.
• 1:51:24
  That's interesting. That's so
• 1:51:26
  interesting. Are there I mean, we're looking at different species, but I think that's a good thing.
• 1:51:29
  I mean, we're looking at two like
• 1:51:30
  significantly different habitats in like
• 1:51:36
  north, north Atlantic and Pacific.
• 1:51:40
  Are there still similar food sources like
• 1:51:43
  similar food, like prey species that are
• 1:51:45
  similar between the Pacific and the
• 1:51:46
  North. Are they quite different?
• 1:51:48
  Yeah. So I think that's a good question.
• 1:51:52
  So they are different species, but I
• 1:51:55
  think you can kind of like group them
• 1:51:56
  into being OK. Yeah, there's there. There
• 1:51:58
  are lots of sort of small silvery fish
• 1:52:01
  that you rely on. Right.
• 1:52:04
  Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 1:52:05
  The species may be different, but yeah,
• 1:52:07
  they're all kind of like generally the
• 1:52:08
  same thing. Small silvery fish that you
• 1:52:10
  can fit in your bill. Gotcha. Are they
• 1:52:13
  affected by, you know, some are more
• 1:52:16
  maybe some of those prey species are just
• 1:52:18
  a little bit more stable.
• 1:52:19
  I'm thinking like, you know, in the
• 1:52:21
  Pacific, I think it's like anchovies and
• 1:52:24
  sardines are doing very fairly well. Is
• 1:52:28
  that my understanding or am I is the
• 1:52:30
  opposite now? I remember there's a big
• 1:52:32
  management practice in the especially in
• 1:52:33
  California for those for those fisheries.
• 1:52:36
  And they're I think they're trying to
• 1:52:37
  stabilize or even they're growing. Please
• 1:52:40
  clarify. I'm trying to think it off my
• 1:52:42
  head. No, that's okay. So yeah. So
• 1:52:44
  sardine and anchovy have been alternating
• 1:52:45
  for OK for many periods.
• 1:52:49
  And the state has tried to work that into
• 1:52:51
  its management strategies. Gotcha. That's
• 1:52:53
  OK. If we know one's up and maybe we
• 1:52:55
  don't hit the other one so hard or
• 1:52:57
  something like that. Right. There's there
• 1:53:00
  is basically just more prey
• 1:53:02
  redundancy in the Pacific.
• 1:53:05
  Rather than it just being sand plants and
• 1:53:08
  two or three other species, it's like a
• 1:53:10
  dozen different forage fish and then it's
• 1:53:13
  zooplankton and then it's invertebrates
• 1:53:16
  that can be relied on by, of course, you
• 1:53:20
  know, different species specialize on
• 1:53:21
  different seabirds specialize on
• 1:53:23
  different prey. But I have a big
• 1:53:25
  ecosystem scale. There's a lot more prey
• 1:53:27
  redundancy in the Pacific than there is
• 1:53:29
  in the North Atlantic. And we think
• 1:53:32
  that's a big part of
• 1:53:33
  explaining what's going on.
• 1:53:35
  Yeah. So having a more diverse sort of
• 1:53:37
  meal ticket, I guess, or menu for these
• 1:53:40
  for these predators, the better it is,
• 1:53:42
  the more stable those colonies would be.
• 1:53:44
  I guess, right? Yeah. They have a more
• 1:53:46
  diverse portfolio to pull from. So when
• 1:53:49
  when things get really hot or really warm
• 1:53:52
  or really stratified or or whatever it
• 1:53:55
  is, that's driving change in the
• 1:53:58
  ecosystem. There's just more diversity to
• 1:54:00
  pull from and to to lean on.
• 1:54:02
  Got you. So we've kind of covered in a
• 1:54:05
  way diversity is being very important for
• 1:54:09
  the stability of these colonies.
• 1:54:12
  Obviously, I assume what's happening is
• 1:54:14
  in North Atlantic. You're not seeing as
• 1:54:16
  much diversity or the diversity is being
• 1:54:18
  affected by what's happening in terms of
• 1:54:20
  stratification and warming and and
• 1:54:23
  shifting. Is that is
• 1:54:24
  that what you found in that?
• 1:54:27
  And the big difference. Yeah. So so we're
• 1:54:31
  seeing that, you know, in places where
• 1:54:35
  there is greater prey diversity, there is
• 1:54:38
  less of a response to warming, there's
• 1:54:40
  less of a response to stratification, and
• 1:54:42
  there's less of an overall trend in
• 1:54:45
  breeding productivity, which tells us
• 1:54:47
  basically like these systems are more
• 1:54:50
  resilient. And we think it has to do with
• 1:54:52
  the community of prey available.
• 1:54:54
  So diversity is the meal ticket,
• 1:54:56
  literally. Yeah. Yeah. Keeping these
• 1:54:58
  these colonies stable. So from this
• 1:55:01
  perspective, like identifying them is one
• 1:55:03
  thing and identifying the reasoning that
• 1:55:05
  could be this what's stable. Like how how
• 1:55:09
  confident is this like this? What you
• 1:55:16
  found here in terms of diversity? Like is
• 1:55:18
  it pretty significant where the the more
• 1:55:20
  diverse area, the better the colony?
• 1:55:24
  I think this is like this is a very big
• 1:55:28
  picture taken at what we think might
• 1:55:31
  explain what's going on. It's not very
• 1:55:34
  mechanistic in terms of saying this is
• 1:55:37
  exactly what drives right particular
• 1:55:40
  seabird species decline. Right.
• 1:55:43
  And this is one of the like cool things
• 1:55:44
  about science in general, I think is that
• 1:55:46
  you get to like pick the scale that
• 1:55:48
  you're going to look at a question. And
• 1:55:50
  you can't look at everything
• 1:55:52
  at the same scale all at once.
• 1:55:55
  Like there, there are certain reasons why
• 1:55:57
  you might want to take a big picture
• 1:55:58
  scale. And then there are certain reasons
• 1:55:59
  why you really want to look at a narrow
• 1:56:02
  example and understand the exact
• 1:56:03
  mechanism behind that.
• 1:56:06
  So, you know, we're we're looking at
• 1:56:08
  these really big picture trends, but
• 1:56:10
  there's a lot of important research that
• 1:56:12
  still has yet to be done linking, you
• 1:56:15
  know, what is it about diet diversity and
• 1:56:18
  prey switching for these species across
• 1:56:22
  different locations that may or may not
• 1:56:25
  be impacted by the sort of climate and
• 1:56:28
  environmental conditions
• 1:56:29
  when the birds are breeding.
• 1:56:32
  And there's a lot of great data that
• 1:56:34
  these researchers collect on these
• 1:56:36
  colonies on diet. So that's something
• 1:56:37
  that we hope to do in the future.
• 1:56:39
  And it makes I mean, it makes more
• 1:56:41
  diverse area you have the better it is,
• 1:56:44
  you know, the more stable your ecosystem
• 1:56:46
  is from top predator down to the smallest
• 1:56:49
  of of of minute organism that's at the
• 1:56:52
  bottom of the food chain.
• 1:56:53
  And I think that's that's an important
• 1:56:55
  thing. And I'm glad you mentioned scale
• 1:56:56
  because yes, that's absolutely important
• 1:56:59
  because, you know, we like you just sent
• 1:57:02
  the paper before that led to that.
• 1:57:04
  One of the reasons why it led to this
• 1:57:05
  paper was it would look at hemispheres
• 1:57:07
  and look at there's an hemisphere. Now
• 1:57:08
  you're looking within hemispheres, maybe
• 1:57:11
  like dive, like comparing between between
• 1:57:13
  two to different types of oceans in the
• 1:57:15
  northern hemisphere.
• 1:57:16
  Obviously very important, but you can
• 1:57:17
  dive even deeper into those and go down
• 1:57:20
  in scale and scale, which
• 1:57:21
  you'll probably get more.
• 1:57:24
  I guess like it'll just get more niche as
• 1:57:27
  you get down and those types of answers
• 1:57:29
  and answering more
• 1:57:30
  questions and so forth.
• 1:57:32
  From from this perspective, for my
• 1:57:35
  audience, what do you want people to get
• 1:57:37
  out of this? Like what what is the take
• 1:57:40
  home message for this paper? When it
• 1:57:43
  comes to like people who listen to early
• 1:57:44
  career scientists, non scientists, what
• 1:57:47
  what's the message you you and your co
• 1:57:49
  authors want to like the 50 some co
• 1:57:51
  authors want to want
• 1:57:53
  you to get out of this?
• 1:57:54
  Yeah, I think, yeah, you know, there's a
• 1:57:57
  there's a few messages
• 1:57:59
  related to the scale point.
• 1:58:04
  It's kind of remarkable that looking at
• 1:58:07
  this huge scale, the whole ecosystem,
• 1:58:12
  like multiple countries, coastlines, we
• 1:58:15
  can see a detectable response to climate
• 1:58:20
  over decades across a whole
• 1:58:23
  diverse top predator community.
• 1:58:26
  Like that's pretty remarkable. Yeah.
• 1:58:29
  Normally for something like this, like
• 1:58:30
  where there's so many different species
• 1:58:32
  and so many different colonies, like
• 1:58:36
  that's that's very noisy. You would
• 1:58:38
  expect the noise to drown out the signal.
• 1:58:42
  But we're actually seeing that like there
• 1:58:44
  is sort of a risk, a climate driven
• 1:58:46
  signal in the breeding productivity of
• 1:58:49
  these birds at these huge scales. And
• 1:58:52
  that tells us something really important
• 1:58:53
  about climate change that tells us that
• 1:58:56
  we're seeing huge ecosystem scale effects
• 1:58:59
  because of our changing
• 1:59:01
  climate at this point.
• 1:59:03
  That's remarkable.
• 1:59:05
  So I think, you know, one thing is, you
• 1:59:10
  know, what do we do with that? Well,
• 1:59:13
  like, there's a lot that we can do about
• 1:59:15
  climate change broadly, thinking
• 1:59:18
  specifically about seabirds and top
• 1:59:21
  predators, I would encourage people to
• 1:59:24
  spend time learning about these
• 1:59:26
  organisms, because it's, it's very easy
• 1:59:30
  for these losses and these changes to be
• 1:59:33
  out of sight, out of mind when you don't have to be able to do that.
• 1:59:34
  Out of mind when you don't have any idea
• 1:59:35
  what these species are. And because
• 1:59:38
  seabirds spend so much of their lives at
• 1:59:40
  sea, like, they're, they're in some ways
• 1:59:43
  very distant from our like, you know,
• 1:59:46
  daily experience, but they're amazing.
• 1:59:49
  They're worth learning about. So I
• 1:59:51
  encourage people to spend some time
• 1:59:53
  learning about what these organisms are,
• 1:59:55
  how they make a living. And I think that
• 1:59:58
  kind of knowledge acquisition can be an
• 2:00:01
  important response to
• 2:00:02
  these, these big messages.
• 2:00:03
  About how climate change is altering our
• 2:00:06
  world. Another thing, though, you know,
• 2:00:10
  big takeaway from this paper was that
• 2:00:12
  prey diversity seems to be associated
• 2:00:15
  with greater ecosystem scale
• 2:00:17
  stability in light of climate.
• 2:00:21
  And what that tells us is that it's
• 2:00:23
  important to when you have
• 2:00:25
  that diversity to conserve it.
• 2:00:28
  So there's all kinds of techniques that
• 2:00:30
  fisheries managers are learning about
• 2:00:32
  related to ecosystem based fisheries
• 2:00:35
  management, taking those incorporating
• 2:00:38
  those kinds of policies, taking the
• 2:00:41
  ecosystem into account when we're, we're
• 2:00:44
  making fisheries decisions about how many
• 2:00:46
  of these forage fish that we know other
• 2:00:48
  predators rely on how
• 2:00:49
  many should we be taking out.
• 2:00:51
  Those are important considerations that
• 2:00:53
  need to come into play.
• 2:00:56
  And then the last thing is just that kind
• 2:01:01
  of the importance of these data sets in
• 2:01:03
  general, like we're only able to see this
• 2:01:07
  signal popping out because of the
• 2:01:09
  tireless dedication of these, you know,
• 2:01:13
  many, many, many researchers, and there
• 2:01:15
  are many, many unnamed interns who are
• 2:01:18
  involved in collecting this data.
• 2:01:20
  Like, that's the only reason that we're
• 2:01:22
  able to tell this story and to see these
• 2:01:24
  signals and to make these claims. So
• 2:01:27
  this, like the long term monitoring
• 2:01:30
  someone somewhere decided to fund someone
• 2:01:33
  to go collect data on a
• 2:01:35
  remote island for decades.
• 2:01:38
  That is so important that we continue to
• 2:01:40
  do that, especially for these places that
• 2:01:43
  have these long term records, we got to
• 2:01:45
  continue those records, we got to
• 2:01:47
  continue collecting data.
• 2:01:49
  And then the other thing we need to do is
• 2:01:50
  we need to go collect more data in places
• 2:01:52
  that are underrepresented. So we know
• 2:01:55
  looking at the southern hemisphere. Part
• 2:01:57
  of the reason we chose the northern
• 2:01:58
  hemisphere is because there's just vastly
• 2:01:59
  more data across
• 2:02:02
  across different ecosystems.
• 2:02:04
  If you look to the southern hemisphere,
• 2:02:05
  there's places where there's lots of
• 2:02:06
  data, and then there's vast expanses of
• 2:02:09
  space where we don't have many records,
• 2:02:11
  right? You need to go to those places and
• 2:02:13
  get information about how ecosystems and
• 2:02:16
  species are faring in those places.
• 2:02:19
  Yeah, because it's interesting, you know,
• 2:02:20
  you mentioned at the beginning, the other
• 2:02:21
  study, the initial study that that kind
• 2:02:23
  of was the precursor to this one
• 2:02:25
  mentioned that southern hemisphere isn't
• 2:02:27
  seeing the as big of impact.
• 2:02:30
  But that may not be true just based off
• 2:02:32
  the data that we have. If we have more
• 2:02:33
  data, we might identify areas that there
• 2:02:36
  are more impact based on species that we
• 2:02:39
  have. It's just a matter of funding,
• 2:02:41
  getting people out there.
• 2:02:43
  Monitoring is expensive. It's not it's
• 2:02:45
  not cheap to do, but it's so important to
• 2:02:48
  have. It allows us to feed our our
• 2:02:50
  models, makes it more accurate and really
• 2:02:53
  gets to tell us what we're doing.
• 2:02:55
  And as you mentioned here, this is a case
• 2:02:56
  in point where being able to have was 138
• 2:02:59
  data sets set was that the number? Yeah,
• 2:03:03
  138 data sets, 39 species to be able to
• 2:03:07
  look at for over decades and and and
• 2:03:10
  having one metric that you can really
• 2:03:12
  focus on that's measured the same way
• 2:03:14
  across those data sets is extremely
• 2:03:16
  important to be able to come to these
• 2:03:17
  conclusions and be able to identify some
• 2:03:19
  hot spots to monitor even
• 2:03:21
  more and dive into even deeper.
• 2:03:23
  So this is this is absolutely amazing.
• 2:03:25
  Obviously, we don't like the results. We
• 2:03:27
  want to see better results in time, but
• 2:03:29
  we can't see it unless we we figure that
• 2:03:31
  out. And that's what this study
• 2:03:32
  highlights. And I do appreciate the work
• 2:03:35
  that you and your colleagues have done to
• 2:03:37
  be able to highlight this for us and
• 2:03:39
  coming on the podcast to be
• 2:03:40
  able to tell us all about.
• 2:03:41
  It's been a pleasure to have you Helen on
• 2:03:43
  on this podcast. And if you had one thing
• 2:03:46
  that people can do, what would you
• 2:03:49
  recommend like just to help in this kind
• 2:03:51
  of situation? What would you say is the
• 2:03:53
  one thing that people do? Not not to say
• 2:03:56
  that we're going to be able to turn it
• 2:03:57
  around with this, but like the starter
• 2:03:58
  thing if people are not, you know, they
• 2:04:01
  don't know seabirds that well or or even
• 2:04:03
  conservation that well,
• 2:04:04
  and they want to help.
• 2:04:06
  Yeah.
• 2:04:07
  Yeah. Um, well, it's a big, it's a big,
• 2:04:13
  it is a big one. It is a big one. And
• 2:04:16
  part of part of why it's difficult is
• 2:04:17
  because the scale we've chosen like this
• 2:04:19
  is like global scale. It's really hard
• 2:04:21
  to. Yeah, it's really hard to see the
• 2:04:23
  connection between an individual's action
• 2:04:26
  and that global scale.
• 2:04:27
  Like this is the problem in like, you
• 2:04:29
  know, environmentalism broadly, like how
• 2:04:32
  do we make these connections? Yeah. Um,
• 2:04:35
  so I, I in some ways I like hesitate to
• 2:04:38
  say this because I really hope it doesn't
• 2:04:40
  sound like a cop out. But I, more and
• 2:04:44
  more, I'm really believing that I think
• 2:04:46
  it's just like so critical to spend time
• 2:04:50
  learning about the organisms and the
• 2:04:54
  environment that surrounds you.
• 2:04:56
  As being like an active part of your
• 2:05:00
  environmentalism. Yeah. So maybe you live
• 2:05:03
  on the coast and you take some time to
• 2:05:05
  learn more about these species that are
• 2:05:07
  around you. You know, some of the in
• 2:05:10
  Southern California, some of these
• 2:05:12
  seabirds that we have monitoring programs
• 2:05:14
  for and are included in this paper.
• 2:05:15
  There's been like an enormous amount of
• 2:05:19
  really important research looking at
• 2:05:21
  like, for instance, like the history of
• 2:05:23
  DDT and brown pelican populations, like
• 2:05:26
  that's something that is like tangible
• 2:05:28
  for an individual living in Southern
• 2:05:31
  California to like to to learn about and
• 2:05:35
  to try to understand and to try to be
• 2:05:37
  involved in preventing those kinds of
• 2:05:40
  things in the future or making
• 2:05:41
  protections for these species. So, you
• 2:05:44
  know, I think that's a really important thing.
• 2:05:45
  Is every individual going to be able to
• 2:05:47
  protect all of these species around the
• 2:05:48
  world? No, but I think it's critical for
• 2:05:51
  each of us to actually spend time
• 2:05:53
  learning about the species that are
• 2:05:55
  around us so that we can learn about what
• 2:05:59
  conservation looks
• 2:06:00
  like in our local areas.
• 2:06:03
  Absolutely.
• 2:06:03
  In our, in our states and our countries
• 2:06:05
  and our provinces. So
• 2:06:06
  yeah, it's what I have in mind.
• 2:06:09
  Yeah, I agree. It's so important to know
• 2:06:10
  the environment around you, whether
• 2:06:12
  you're on the coast or not. There's great
• 2:06:14
  apps like iNaturalist to be able to
• 2:06:15
  identify like plant species and insects
• 2:06:17
  and things like that that are around your
• 2:06:20
  area that I find like once you're more in
• 2:06:22
  tuned with that you start to notice the
• 2:06:25
  just your surrounding environment more
• 2:06:28
  and you notice if it's going up.
• 2:06:30
  It leads you to be more curious, right?
• 2:06:33
  And I'm sure just coming back to you
• 2:06:34
  being a science teacher and just being
• 2:06:36
  like, just be curious because that
• 2:06:38
  that'll lead you down sort of like a
• 2:06:41
  wormhole of learning more and more about
• 2:06:43
  the environment and then
• 2:06:45
  being more aware of it.
• 2:06:47
  And I think a lot of the times the way we
• 2:06:48
  live, especially here in North America,
• 2:06:50
  we live in a very fast paced society
• 2:06:52
  where we're just trying
• 2:06:53
  to get to the next thing.
• 2:06:54
  And we just kind of ignore what's around
• 2:06:57
  us. And if you start to just look around,
• 2:06:59
  there's apps, there's so many things like
• 2:07:01
  even this, the
• 2:07:02
  seabirds.feralandinstitute.org like going
• 2:07:05
  to this, which I'll put in the show notes
• 2:07:06
  and just learning about
• 2:07:07
  seabirds and seeing these
• 2:07:09
  and like the studies that are going on.
• 2:07:11
  It's going to be educational for you.
• 2:07:13
  We're going to learn a lot. And you're
• 2:07:14
  going to come around with some pretty
• 2:07:16
  cool things to talk at parties and talk
• 2:07:19
  to people and, you know, introduce what
• 2:07:21
  you're what you're learning. And I think
• 2:07:23
  it's I think it's great. And I love the
• 2:07:24
  fact that you're coming on this podcast
• 2:07:25
  and and being a part of this and helping
• 2:07:28
  people understand what's happening with
• 2:07:30
  seabirds. So we'll definitely appreciate
• 2:07:31
  you coming on. We'd love to have you back
• 2:07:33
  to talk about more more things that
• 2:07:34
  you're working on. Yeah, totally happy
• 2:07:36
  to. It's been such a
• 2:07:37
  pleasure, Andrew. Thank you.
• 2:07:38
  No problem. Thank you. Thank you, Helen,
• 2:07:41
  for joining us on today's episode of the
• 2:07:42
  How to Protect the Ocean podcast. It was
• 2:07:44
  great to be able to talk to you about
• 2:07:46
  just regular stuff about seabirds. I
• 2:07:49
  don't get a lot of seabird experts on. It
• 2:07:50
  was really great to see how you developed
• 2:07:52
  your career, how you went from teaching
• 2:07:55
  science to be able to use it to do
• 2:07:57
  research and also to tell the stories
• 2:07:59
  that she discovered with her colleagues
• 2:08:01
  and with this massive project to look at
• 2:08:04
  a very high overview of
• 2:08:06
  what's happening with seabirds.
• 2:08:07
  What's happening with seabirds and what
• 2:08:08
  it's telling us about the ocean and its
• 2:08:10
  health. I think it's something that's
• 2:08:12
  extremely, extremely important. And I
• 2:08:14
  also wanted to let people know that we
• 2:08:16
  have that link that we talked about a
• 2:08:17
  number of times during the interview.
• 2:08:19
  It's seabirds dot Farallen Institute dot
• 2:08:22
  org. And I will put that in the show
• 2:08:24
  notes. Farallen or Farallon, I guess is
• 2:08:27
  what is how it's pronounced this F a R a
• 2:08:29
  L L O N and then Institute all one word.
• 2:08:32
  So seabirds dot Farallon Institute dot
• 2:08:34
  org. This is something that I think it's really great. We're going to talk about that.
• 2:08:36
  I think it's really great website, very
• 2:08:37
  interactive, kind of gives you the faces,
• 2:08:39
  the names of the people that are doing
• 2:08:40
  this type of work all about ocean
• 2:08:43
  temperature stratification, how important
• 2:08:45
  it is. It's going to be really great. And
• 2:08:46
  I think we need to dive deeper into all
• 2:08:48
  these studies. The locations of the study
• 2:08:50
  sites and everything are on that website.
• 2:08:52
  I think it's really important. Something
• 2:08:54
  to check out seabirds dot Farallen
• 2:08:56
  Institute dot org. We'll also put the
• 2:08:58
  link to the actual paper so you can take
• 2:09:00
  a look at that if you so desire. And I
• 2:09:02
  want to thank Helen again for joining us
• 2:09:03
  on the podcast. And if you have any
• 2:09:05
  questions or comments, let us know.
• 2:09:06
  About seabirds or about this study,
• 2:09:08
  please let us know. You can put your
• 2:09:10
  comments in the comments section below if
• 2:09:12
  you're watching this on YouTube. If
• 2:09:13
  you're listening to this through audio on
• 2:09:14
  your favorite podcast app, you can
• 2:09:15
  contact me in a number of different ways.
• 2:09:17
  But go to Instagram at how to protect the
• 2:09:19
  ocean. Just DM me at how to protect the
• 2:09:21
  ocean or go to speak up for blue dot com
• 2:09:24
  forward slash contact and just fill out
• 2:09:25
  the form and go straight to my email. I'd
• 2:09:27
  love to hear from you. I want to thank
• 2:09:28
  you all for joining us and supporting us
• 2:09:30
  throughout this entire time. Ten years
• 2:09:32
  over ten years of doing this podcast.
• 2:09:35
  It's something that's very special to me
• 2:09:36
  and I hope it's special to you as you
• 2:09:38
  grow and listen to this podcast. I really
• 2:09:40
  do appreciate you listening and having
• 2:09:43
  questions and engaging. It's always a lot
• 2:09:45
  of fun. So thank you so much for joining
• 2:09:46
  me on this episode of the how to protect
• 2:09:48
  the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew
• 2:09:49
  Lewin from the true North strong and
• 2:09:51
  free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you
• 2:09:52
  next time and happy conservation.