Farallon Institute Newsletter - Summer 2021

Around The [Home] Office

Maggie Lee Post has joined Farallon Institute as the new Alcatraz seabird monitoring technician!  She will also work on a project to study the diets of marine predators.  Maggie Lee is quite experienced in seabird colony monitoring, having previously worked in Maine, Hawaii, and San Diego, CA.  We welcome her to our team and are excited for the contributions she’ll bring to FI research.  Read more about Maggie Lee here. 

Additionally, Chelle Gentemann now leads NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Program development of “open” science best practices for NASA researchers.  Open science is “research conducted openly and transparently” (National Academies of Sciences, 2018); today, this means that data and programs are freely available to anyone who wants to use them.  This collaborative practice facilitates easily reproduced and accessible research which ultimately advances the scientific field at a faster pace, amplifies impacts, and expands participation in science. 

State of the Ocean

In central and northern California, the ocean and land tend to alternate between cool/dry and warm/wet conditions, just like riding a see-saw.  When one goes up, the other almost always comes down.  In years with strong upwelling (often La Niña years), the ocean is cool and thriving, while over land tends to be drier than usual.  This is the stage we are in now: good for the ocean, not so good for areas on land.  In El Niño years, winter tends to be wetter on land while in the ocean, warm temperature and poor upwelling conditions prevail, negatively impacting the marine ecosystem.  This back-and-forth see-saw has been occurring for a very long time, and was only recently disrupted during 'The Blob' years in 2014–2016 when we had a terrestrial drought and marine heat wave co-occurring.  We are now back on the see-saw, leaving the recent La Niña winter, which was cool in the ocean but dry on land.  We are moving into a neutral prediction for the coming months (neither La Niña nor El Niño; see the ENSO blog).  In the meantime, let's enjoy a cool and potentially productive ocean this summer!

Seabirds sound the alarm

There is heightened public awareness that the world’s oceans are under duress, with over-fishing and plastic pollution as some of the more tangible problems.  Now, seabirds are calling attention to another problem and have delivered a warning message.  Serving as translators of the birds’ message, an international team of 40 scientists led by FI President & Senior Scientist William Sydeman published findings on May 28 in Science magazine that some seabirds are struggling to raise young where the globe is most rapidly warming—in the northern hemisphere.

Using over 50 years of data from 67 seabird species across the globe, the team found that the breeding success of fish-eating seabirds in the northern hemisphere has trended downwards through time, meaning that they are producing fewer offspring each year.  Because seabirds rely on food like small fish and plankton (e.g., krill), long-term declines in their breeding success indicates that food resources aren’t holding up in ecosystems where the rate of ocean warming and other human impacts are highest.  

Marine ecologists have often likened seabirds to “canaries in the coalmine” because of their sensitivity to environmental disturbances.  This sensitivity is due to the challenge of raising young at dedicated breeding sites while their ocean-based food is constantly on the move.  As climate warming alters ocean habitats, the locations of temperature zones in which various seabird food thrives can shift farther away from seabird breeding sites —and that’s when the birds suffer.

The implications of the study extend well beyond seabirds since they eat the same types of food as other predators such as marine mammals and large fish and invertebrates, such as salmon and squid.  When seabirds aren’t doing well, this is a red flag that something bigger is happening below the ocean’s surface.

Policies to alleviate climate change are obviously needed, a long-term solution brought forth in the paper.  The authors also suggest that in the northern hemisphere, where global warming may be worsened by additional human impacts like fishing, fisheries closures around breeding colonies during chick rearing periods can be used to ease pressure.  In the southern hemisphere, where the rate of human-induced changes is increasing, creation of long-term Marine Protected Areas could prevent those birds from similar fates to their northern counterparts.   

The study was also profiled by Scientific American, The Conversation, and National Geographic.

Breeding season on Alcatraz Island begins again

Alcatraz Island reopened on March 15, 2021, after being closed to all public visitors for one year.  However, while it was closed to people, Brandt’s cormorants and other bird species continued to nest on the island.  Cormorants are highly susceptible to disturbance from humans and may abandon their nest sites if exposed to auditory or visual disturbances such as pedestrian visitors too close or boats and planes around the island.  Thus, with highly-reduced human presence during the COVID-19 pandemic, the cormorant colony expanded into some new territories typically subject to too much human presence to allow for nesting.  Due to the island closure, the 2,660 Brandt’s cormorant nests on Alcatraz in 2020 surpassed the previous record by approximately 500 breeding pairs.  Preliminary estimates indicate 2,750 breeding pairs on the island this year; with nests still being initiated, this will mean a new island record once again.  

In addition, the cormorants began nesting approximately one month earlier in 2021 than in a typical year. The first eggs were laid in early March. This early start was likely due to both reduced human exposure and favorable foraging conditions within San Francisco Bay. Early nesting means that some of the cormorant chicks are already fully grown and ready to test out their flying skills. While the cormorants are beginning to fledge from the island, the Western gull colony has also reached its peak with an estimated 750 nests, and chicks just began to hatch in mid-May. Other species breeding on the island this year include great blue herons, pigeon guillemots, snowy egrets, and one pair of peregrine falcons; all of these species are protected and monitored by the National Parks Service. As Alcatraz begins to welcome tourists back to the island, we will be closely monitoring the impacts on these urban seabird colonies.