Lost at Sea: Starving Birds in a Warming World

The Pacific Coast saw record numbers of dead Cassin鈥檚 Auklets this winter. We dive in to see what went wrong.

A couple of days after Christmas, Carl Haynie and his wife, Terry Risdon, made the three-hour drive from their home in Sammamish, Washington, to the same remote beach they鈥檝e visited every month for five years. They passed through the Seattle suburbs, hugging the rugged coast to reach their isolated, one-kilometer stretch on the Olympic Peninsula. Haynie and Risdon are beach bird monitors, two of the more than 1,200 volunteers who patrol shores from California to Alaska, recording any dead birds that wash up in their survey zone.

Haynie, a software developer and longtime birder, likens the outings to treasure hunts. 鈥淵ou never know what you鈥檙e going to find.鈥 He鈥檚 spotted carcasses of such rare birds as Pink-footed Shearwaters and Black-footed Albatrosses, and deduced the identities of 40-plus species by a wing, head, or foot alone鈥攕ometimes all that鈥檚 left. But the pair had never seen anything like what awaited them that December day.

Dark bumps peppered the beach. Walking over to one, they realized the coast was littered with dead The softball-size seabirds showed little wear and tear, despite having been spit out of the ocean and rolled across the sand. Risdon began picking up carcasses; after a quarter-mile her bucket was overflowing. By the survey鈥檚 end, they鈥檇 collected 62 auklets. 鈥淚t was pretty crazy,鈥 recalls Haynie. 鈥淲e鈥檝e found dead birds before, but never more than 20 in one go. And we鈥檝e never seen more than two Cassin鈥檚.鈥

Worse, it turned out their stretch wasn鈥檛 the only beach seeing record numbers of dead Cassin鈥檚. Since October, in what biologists are calling an unprecedented die-off, thousands of the birds have washed ashore, from central California north to British Columbia. Dozens of experts from disciplines as wide-ranging as oceanography, pathology, and climatology鈥攑lus the volunteer army鈥攁re working together to gather pieces of the puzzle. As of early February, when 约炮视频 went to press, the wreck was still unfolding, and the primary culprit was thought to be something the scientific community dubbed 鈥渢he blob.鈥

 

Every avian species that winters at sea inevitably suffers losses, especially after big storms. But when Cassin鈥檚, people took notice. It鈥檚 not that the birds are endangered鈥攏ot even close. Their global population is 3.5 million strong. It鈥檚 all about what they eat. These diminutive birds dine largely on zooplankton, tiny marine creatures near the bottom of the food chain. 鈥淭hat makes them a very useful ecological indicator,鈥 says Bill Sydeman, a senior scientist at the Farallon Institute, a marine ecology nonprofit; he鈥檚 been studying Cassin鈥檚 for three decades. 鈥淚f ocean conditions change, auklets might be an early warning sign.鈥

It became clear that something was up in late October, when volunteers began reporting seeing 10 to 100 times the normal number of Cassin鈥檚 bodies. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a lot,鈥 says , a University of Washington seabird expert who launched the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (), whose 700 volunteers include Haynie. 鈥淭hat doesn鈥檛 actually translate into knee-deep in bodies, but in the stretches with the highest number of birds鈥350 per kilometer, probably the highest wreck value we鈥檝e seen in the Lower 48鈥攜ou鈥檙e only going a few steps before you see the next one.鈥

Because the birds usually sink or are eaten before they wash ashore, Parrish estimates that in addition to the 3,500 recorded on land, tens of thousands more have died and disappeared at sea.  Cassin鈥檚 seem to be the only seabird affected. 鈥淚t鈥檚 curious,鈥 says Parrish. 鈥淚f the bottom was falling out of the food chain, we might expect to see a wide variety of species stressed. It could be that Cassin鈥檚 are dying out early.鈥

By November experts had a solid grip on the magnitude and extent of the wreck, thanks to the volunteers from American and Canadian beachcomber groups. But they still didn鈥檛 know the cause. That requires corpses鈥攖he fresher, the better.

An email asking COASSTers to collect dead Cassin鈥檚 was on Diane Bilderback鈥檚 mind when she went to survey her stretch near Bandon, Oregon, on November 22. A volunteer since 2006, Bilderback figured she might be busy, because a big storm had hit the night before. The surf was huge that day, the waves capped with thick sea foam whipped up by the water. Bilderback watched an auklet tumble onto the beach. 鈥淚 could tell it was still alive,鈥 she says, 鈥渂ut not for long.鈥 She kept walking. When she returned 20 minutes later, it was dead.

With gloved hands, Bilderback placed the bird in a Ziploc bag, following instructions outlined by the U.S. Geological Survey鈥檚 in Madison, Wisconsin, where the auklet was headed. At home she transferred it to the best place to keep it cool: her refrigerator. On Monday she packed the chilled carcass in a Styrofoam cooler lined with icepacks, boxed it up, filled out the paperwork, and took the package to FedEx (the go-to folks for transporting animals, including live pandas and sea lions). Tuesday the auklet arrived on schedule.

If there鈥檚 an American wildlife mystery in the air, the scientists at the National Wildlife Health Center are likely on the case. They identified the deadly fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in bats. They proved that the 鈥,鈥 when thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky four winters ago, wasn鈥檛 caused by an environmental catastrophe but by New Year鈥檚 fireworks (spooked birds crashed into stationary objects at night and died). And last winter they figured out that West Nile virus, typically seen in summer, in Utah.

When Bilderback鈥檚 auklet arrived, wildlife pathologist Julia Lankton got to work. In a pressurized necropsy room built to contain the nastiest diseases, Lankton swabbed the bird鈥檚 mouth and cloaca before examining the feathers, skin, mouth, eyes, and ears for trauma or lesions. Everything looked intact, just like with the dozen-plus other Cassin鈥檚 she鈥檇 received. She opened up the bird, cutting into its white-feathered belly. She removed each organ, and took tissue samples for viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic, and toxicological tests, some of which can take weeks (鈥渘ot exactly the 50 minutes people expect from watching CSI,鈥 she says).

Lankton鈥檚 findings confirmed what pathologists in California and Oregon had found. 鈥淢ost are juveniles born this year,鈥 she says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e emaciated, and very rarely have we found any food in their stomachs.鈥 Food loss might have prevented the birds from feeding actively, but Lankton couldn鈥檛 rule out an underlying disease or toxin that鈥檚 messing with their ability to find food. The final diagnostic test results are due in February.

Still, she鈥檇 uncovered important clues: Every bird was starving, and most were young-of-the-year. 鈥淲e think it鈥檚 involved with copepods and krill [the zooplankton Cassin鈥檚 eat] and the really unusual ocean conditions we鈥檝e seen this year,鈥 says the Farallon Institute鈥檚 Sydeman. 鈥淏ut we don鈥檛 know how it all fits together.鈥

That鈥檚 where the blob comes in.

 

鈥淭he blob鈥 is the name Washington climatologist Nick Bond gave to the enormous, anomalously warm, that formed in the Gulf of Alaska in early 2014, due to abnormally weak winds in the North Pacific. Another one formed off Baja California last year. And the typical upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water off the West Coast never materialized last summer because a low-pressure trough between California and Hawaii weakened the winds that drive the process. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a weird year,鈥 says Nate Mantua, a climatologist with NOAA Fisheries. 鈥淲ater temperatures have been 5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit from British Columbia to California starting about midsummer, and I don鈥檛 have any good explanation about why this happened.鈥

Mantua says he can鈥檛 link the blob鈥檚  formation to human-induced climate change, and predictions of a strong 鈥攚hich carries tropical waters north鈥攚ere wrong. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not unprecedented,鈥 Mantua says of the warming, 鈥渂ut it is up there with the extremes in historical records.鈥

While the warm water brought rare visitors, including Band-rumped Storm-Petrels and pygmy killer whales, it doesn鈥檛 support the energy-rich zooplankton communities that Cassin鈥檚 eat. Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with NOAA Fisheries, samples copepods twice a month. When local winds died down in late September and the blob moved in, 鈥渃opepod species I鈥檇 never seen in my life showed up off the Oregon coast,鈥 he says. Unlike the boreal copepods鈥斺渂ig, full of lipids, and they make everybody that eats them fat鈥濃攖hese tropical ones are 鈥渟kinny.鈥 He suspects that the blob drove the krill too deep for auklets to reach, and flushed the 鈥渇atties鈥 out of the area.

Jaime Jahncke, a biologist with the California nonprofit Point Blue, saw something similar happen off central California. 鈥淚n September, instead of getting krill in our nets, we were getting , which Cassin鈥檚 don鈥檛 eat,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t was a dramatic change from what we saw earlier in the year, and in previous years.鈥

Jahncke and Peterson鈥檚 observations hint that the Cassin鈥檚 prey was likely diminished all along the West Coast in the fall. Another important fact: 2014 was a banner breeding year for Cassin鈥檚, both in British Columbia, where three-quarters of the population nests, and in the Farallon Islands, off San Francisco. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got a lot of young, inexperienced, na茂ve birds out there right now,鈥 says Mark Hipfner, a seabird population research scientist for Environment Canada鈥檚 Wildlife Research Division, who directs a program in B.C. that monitors about half the world鈥檚 Cassin鈥檚. 鈥淚f conditions get tough, these are the birds likely to succumb first.鈥

 

For now the scientists working the Cassin鈥檚 case can do little more than wait. Hipfner says he can鈥檛 gauge the full extent of the wreck until the adults return to breeding colonies. If the die-off largely hit young birds that haven鈥檛 reached breeding age, it shouldn鈥檛 cause long-term damage to the population, he adds.

As for whether other species are suffering, nobody knows yet. Several scientists said a lag effect going up the food chain might surface. They鈥檒l keep a close eye on other seabirds, small fish such as anchovies, and juvenile salmon (krill eaters from the drought plaguing the West).

In the meantime, Mantua, the NOAA climatologist, says likely won鈥檛 cool soon. The high-pressure system鈥攚ith less wind and fairer weather favorable for the blob鈥攊s persisting, so the North Pacific is staying warm.

As for beachcomber Carl Haynie, he was heartened by his January 19 survey, which turned up only 14 Cassin鈥檚. 鈥淢y god, I hope it鈥檚 finally dying down.鈥 He鈥檚 concerned for the birds, of course. But the treasure-hunter in him is also ready for the next mystery.