An unusually high number of dead tufted puffins washed ashore in the Bering Sea last month, adding to the rising number of sea-bird deaths that baffle Alaska’s science community.
Research Biologist John Piatt with the Anchorage USGS…
Piatt: “We have millions of seabirds in Alaska and many of those die every year, there’s always something drifting ashore, both birds and mammals. So that said, sometimes you get unusually high numbers and that usually raises a red flag.”
From August through October, shores of the Pribilof Islands turned up approximately 250 dead sea birds, mostly tufted puffins, which Piatt says just adds to a ‘continuing phenomenon’.
Piatt: “There was a very large die-off of Cassin’s Auklets off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, now Cassin’s Auklets are related to puffins, they’re in the same family of sea-birds, they typically feed on zooplankton like krill, but still, there was a very large die-off in 2014 that was associated with the warm water that was found off the coast at that time, ‘The Blob’ as we now call it.”
He says the Blob did not appear to affect Alaskan sea-birds in 2014. But as it spread north, reports of unprecedented die-offs of common murres started rolling in from the Alaska Gulf in the fall of 2015.
Those continued throughout the winter of 2015 and , stacking up reports of over 40,000 dead birds sited, including on the shores of Alaska’s largest freshwater lake during the spring of 2016.
Piatt says these events are not considered one incident, but the similarities cannot be ignored.
Most of the sea-bird carcasses involved in the die-offs appear to be emaciated, or starving, prompting scientists to investigate what is prohibiting the animals from finding sufficient food.
One of the most widely cited causes is the warmer temperatures the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea have been exhibiting.
Not only do those temperatures impact the birds’ food directly, but have indirect impacts like causing larger predator fish to eat more of the same fish as the birds, meaning less food supply.
Investigation into increased biotoxins affects on sea-birds are also being investigated since warmer water temperatures allow those algae to bloom.
Researchers are continuing to investigate the many facets of the die-offs.
*Photo courtesy of the Bering Watch Facebook Page. BeringWatch is a community-based monitoring program developed and managed by the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Ecosystem Conservation Office.*