Cassin's Auklet Farallon Islands Population

[skierinvermont]

The Farallon Island population of Cassin's Auklet, which is a small seabird that feeds on krill, has declined rapidly over the last few decades. The Farallon Islands are located well offshore of the San Francisco area. Over the last 40 years, the number of breeding pairs has declined from around 100,000 to between 10,000-20,000 over the last decade. Two years ago my professor had as read this article from High Country News on the decline of Cassin's Auklet.

http://www.hcn.org/i...7481/print_view

The article and the purpose of assigning it was largely concerning whether or not humans should interfere in nature to try and "fix" the damage climate change may do in the future. Traditionally, scientists have taken a passive approach of creating protected areas and trying to minimize human impact. Some suggest that the response to climate change will require a more active approach to support nature. However, it uses Cassin's Auklet as an example of a species which is dying out due to climate change stating:

Armored in a rain slicker and floppy hat against guano-bombing waterfowl, Russ Bradley pokes about for signs of life on a craggy island paradise just off the California shore. One might expect the search to be easy, given the hundreds of thousands of common murres, ashy storm petrels, Brandt's cormorants, Leach's storm petrels, Western gulls, double-crested cormorants, glaucous-winged gulls, black oystercatchers, pigeon guillemots, rhinocerous auklets, tufted puffins, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and Cassin's auklets that summer on the Farallon Islands, 27 miles off San Francisco in the Pacific Ocean.

During the past three years, however, Bradley has been checking on the breeding sites of the black, burrow-nesting Cassin's auklet, and he's been finding abandoned eggs; dead, black, cue-ball-sized chicks; and skinny, faltering fledglings. "Most of the chicks have died," says Bradley, a research biologist with PRBO Conservation Science, a nonprofit, founded as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, that has spent the last 40 years counting and observing the hundreds of thousands of birds that nest yearly on the Farallons. "This was as complete a failure response as we'd ever seen before. And we'd been following this species for 35 years."

The apparent culprit: Ocean currents, redirected by rising sea temperature, have swept out of range the millions of tiny krill that the adult birds scoop into their beaks, chew into purple smelly goo and then spit up for their young. In other words, this unprecedented starvation wave may be a result of global warming.

So I did some research and found several studies warning of the Auklet's imminent demise:

The Farallon auklet population has declined by ~6%/year during the past three decades and climate change will likely accelerate these declines. Conservation strategies for seabirds should increase population resilience by protecting colonies across the breeding range and reducing non-climate stressors.

http://www.allacadem...6528_index.html

I think I might have found an article or two which did bring up natural variability in the California Current System (which is related to the PDO) but others attributed the decline in the CCS more towards climate change and predicted further decline. So I suggested that if the PDO does go negative it might lead to a partial recovery of the Auklets. And indeed breeding has steadily improved over the last few years, and 2010 was by far the most successful breeding year in the last 40.

Record Breeding Year for Cassin's Aulket

I thought some of you might like this because it may be an example of natural variability being under-played, although we will have to see what happens to the California Current System and the Auklet's over the next 20-50 years. Also, it's just an amazing ecological representation of changes in ocean climate. These birds live and die in large numbers based on the California Current System and potentially the PDO.

[BethesdaWX]

Thats interesting, am reading through it now.

By chance, were there any observation of the birds during the 1930-1970 timeframe?

[skierinvermont]

Thats interesting, am reading through it now.

By chance, were there any observation of the birds during the 1930-1970 timeframe?

I did look for that because I wanted to find out what the last +PDO did, but I don't remember any good observations but there might be some estimates. If there aren't any for Cassin's Auklet there could be estimates for other species with similar food sources.

It's a pretty amazing ecological representation of ocean variability. These birds live or die in large numbers directly based on ENSO, the California Current (and potentially PDO) variability.

[Clifford]

Record Breeding Year for Cassin's Aulket

So, they have a single data point between 1970 and 1990, where the majority of the drop occurred.

Anybody think that 100,000 sounds like a pretty "round number"? Is that a coincidence?

Most of the other species counted have far fewer numbers and have had relatively stable populations over the past few decades. In fact, the Cassin's Auklet seems to be relatively stable since 1990. The standardized productivity does not seem to have varied significantly over the last 4 decades (figure 1, lower left).

Certainly around the globe, a number of species of birds have had problems with humans, in particular the introduction of new predators, or changes to habitat. If the climate does change, vegetation and habitat will change with it. However, climate has changed throughout earth's history. Some species have adapted, some haven't, some just go through population shifts.

What humans have brought is deforestation, conversion to croplands, killing "pests" (which can have repercussions throughout the food chain), toxins, importing non-native plants and animals, over fishing, hunting, etc.

[tacoman25]

Very interesting.

I think there are a lot of changes that happen naturally in nature, sometimes severe, and the tendency these days is to blame any "negative change" on AGW. It's just too easy, and probably often misled, as this post illustrates.

This is what bothers me most with many of the AGW alarmists I've come into contact with...the mentality that suddenly nature is powerless to human-based evils (CO2 in this case), and everything "bad" that happens is due to AGW somehow. I can totally understand and sympathize with trying to protect endangered species, but often climate change is thrown in there as a major cause, even though over-hunting, habitat loss, etc, are usually far and away the largest causes.

[BethesdaWX]

Very interesting.

I think there are a lot of changes that happen naturally in nature, sometimes severe, and the tendency these days is to blame any "negative change" on AGW. It's just too easy, and probably often misled, as this post illustrates.

This is what bothers me most with many of the AGW alarmists I've come into contact with...the mentality that suddenly nature is powerless to human-based evils (CO2 in this case), and everything "bad" that happens is due to AGW somehow. I can totally understand and sympathize with trying to protect endangered species, but often climate change is thrown in there as a major cause, even though over-hunting, habitat loss, etc, are usually far and away the largest causes.

And you'd think that would be easier to determine as well...

Its like, the human population. We can handle a rough winter or storm or drought, but take our homes away and burn our landscape/hoes/crops, War/fighting, etc, we're dead.

[aslkahuna]

The El Niño in its originally defined term as a warming of the water off the coast of South America is renowned for its impact on the anchovy population in the off shore waters and the bird species that feed upon them there and in the Galapagos.

Steve

[skierinvermont]

The El Niño in its originally defined term as a warming of the water off the coast of South America is renowned for its impact on the anchovy population in the off shore waters and the bird species that feed upon them there and in the Galapagos.

Steve

Yeah the Farallon islands and the Galapagos along with some other island chains are pretty ideally situated for upwelling that is controlled by ENSO variability.