Larry Lade
Moderator
I know many of you are keenly aware of the difficulties being experienced by the various seabirds. Also I have seen some post regarding this issue. I hope this is not a repeat post on an existing thread.
I received this email from a friend who is a naturalist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.
>Disaster At Sea As Global
>Warming Hits Seabirds
>By Michael McCarthy
>Environment Editor
>The Independent - UK
>7-30-4
>
>Hundreds of thousands of Scottish seabirds have failed to breed
>this summer in a wildlife catastrophe which is being linked by
>scientists directly to global warming.
>
>The massive unprecedented collapse of nesting attempts by several
>seabird species in Orkney and Shetland is likely to prove the
>first major impact of climate change on Britain.
>
>In what could be a sub-plot from the recent disaster movie, The
>Day After Tomorrow, a rise in sea temperature is believed to have
>led to the mysterious disappearance of a key part of the marine
>food chain - the sandeel, the small fish whose great teeming
>shoals have hitherto sustained larger fish, marine mammals and
>seabirds in their millions.
>
>In Orkney and Shetland, the sandeel stocks have been shrinking
>for several years, and this summer they have disappeared: the
>result for seabirds has been mass starvation. The figures for
>breeding failure, for Shetland in particular, almost defy belief.
>
>More than 172,000 breeding pairs of guillemots were recorded in
>the islands in the last national census, Seabird 2000, whose
>results were published this year; this summer the birds have
>produced almost no young, according to Peter Ellis, Shetland
>area manager for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
>(RSPB).
>
>Martin Heubeck of Aberdeen University, who has monitored Shetland
>seabirds for 30 years, said: "The breeding failure of the
>guillemots is unprecedented in Europe." More than 6,800 pairs of
>great skuas were recorded in Shetland in the same census; this
>year they have produced a handful of chicks - perhaps fewer than
>10 - while the arctic skuas (1,120 pairs in the census) have
>failed to produce any surviving young.
>
>The 24,000 pairs of arctic terns, and the 16,700 pairs of
>Shetland kittiwakes - small gulls - have "probably suffered
>complete failure", said Mr Ellis.
>
>In Orkney the picture is very similar, although detailed figures
>are not yet available. "It looks very bad," said the RSPB's
>warden on Orkney mainland, Andy Knight. "Very few of the birds
>have raised any chicks at all."
>
>The counting and monitoring is still going on and the figures are
>by no means complete: it is likely that puffins, for example,
>will also have suffered massive breeding failure but because they
>nest deep in burrows, this is not immediately obvious.
>
>But the astonishing scale of what has taken place is already
>clear - and the link to climate change is being openly made by
>scientists. It is believed that the microscopic plankton on which
>tiny sandeel larvae feed are moving northwards as the sea water
>warms, leaving the baby fish with nothing to feed on.
>
>This is being seen in the North Sea in particular, where the
>water temperature has risen by 2C in the past 20 years, and where
>the whole ecosystem is thought to be undergoing a "regime shift",
>or a fundamental alteration in the interaction of its component
>species. "Think of the North Sea as an engine, and plankton as
>the fuel driving it," said Euan Dunn of the RSPB, one of the
>world's leading experts on the interaction of fish and seabirds.
>"The fuel mix has changed so radically in the past 20 years, as a
>result of climate change, that the whole engine is now
>spluttering and starting to malfunction. All of the animals in
>the food web above the plankton, first the sandeels, then the
>larger fish like cod, and ultimately the seabirds, are starting
>to be affected."
>
>Research last year clearly showed that the higher the
>temperature, the less sandeels could maintain their population
>level, said Dr Dunn. "The young sandeels are simply not
>surviving."
>
>Although over-fishing of sandeels has caused breeding failures in
>the past, the present situation could not be blamed on fishing,
>he said. The Shetland sandeel fishery was catching so few fish
>that it was closed as a precautionary measure earlier this year.
>"Climate change is a far more likely explanation."
>
>The spectacular seabird populations of the Northern Isles have a
>double importance. They are of great value scientifically,
>holding, for example, the world's biggest populations of great
>skuas. And they are of enormous value to Orkney and Shetland
>tourism, being the principal draw for many visitors. The national
>and international significance of what has happened is only just
>beginning to dawn on the wider political and scientific
>community, but some leading figures are already taking it on
>board.
>
>"This is an incredible event," said Tony Juniper, director of
>Friends of the Earth. "The catastrophe [of these] seabirds is
>just a foretaste of what lies ahead.
>
>"It shows that climate change is happening now, [with]
>devastating consequences here in Britain, and it shows that
>reducing the pollution causing changes to the earth's climate
>should now be the global number one political priority."
I received this email from a friend who is a naturalist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.
>Disaster At Sea As Global
>Warming Hits Seabirds
>By Michael McCarthy
>Environment Editor
>The Independent - UK
>7-30-4
>
>Hundreds of thousands of Scottish seabirds have failed to breed
>this summer in a wildlife catastrophe which is being linked by
>scientists directly to global warming.
>
>The massive unprecedented collapse of nesting attempts by several
>seabird species in Orkney and Shetland is likely to prove the
>first major impact of climate change on Britain.
>
>In what could be a sub-plot from the recent disaster movie, The
>Day After Tomorrow, a rise in sea temperature is believed to have
>led to the mysterious disappearance of a key part of the marine
>food chain - the sandeel, the small fish whose great teeming
>shoals have hitherto sustained larger fish, marine mammals and
>seabirds in their millions.
>
>In Orkney and Shetland, the sandeel stocks have been shrinking
>for several years, and this summer they have disappeared: the
>result for seabirds has been mass starvation. The figures for
>breeding failure, for Shetland in particular, almost defy belief.
>
>More than 172,000 breeding pairs of guillemots were recorded in
>the islands in the last national census, Seabird 2000, whose
>results were published this year; this summer the birds have
>produced almost no young, according to Peter Ellis, Shetland
>area manager for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
>(RSPB).
>
>Martin Heubeck of Aberdeen University, who has monitored Shetland
>seabirds for 30 years, said: "The breeding failure of the
>guillemots is unprecedented in Europe." More than 6,800 pairs of
>great skuas were recorded in Shetland in the same census; this
>year they have produced a handful of chicks - perhaps fewer than
>10 - while the arctic skuas (1,120 pairs in the census) have
>failed to produce any surviving young.
>
>The 24,000 pairs of arctic terns, and the 16,700 pairs of
>Shetland kittiwakes - small gulls - have "probably suffered
>complete failure", said Mr Ellis.
>
>In Orkney the picture is very similar, although detailed figures
>are not yet available. "It looks very bad," said the RSPB's
>warden on Orkney mainland, Andy Knight. "Very few of the birds
>have raised any chicks at all."
>
>The counting and monitoring is still going on and the figures are
>by no means complete: it is likely that puffins, for example,
>will also have suffered massive breeding failure but because they
>nest deep in burrows, this is not immediately obvious.
>
>But the astonishing scale of what has taken place is already
>clear - and the link to climate change is being openly made by
>scientists. It is believed that the microscopic plankton on which
>tiny sandeel larvae feed are moving northwards as the sea water
>warms, leaving the baby fish with nothing to feed on.
>
>This is being seen in the North Sea in particular, where the
>water temperature has risen by 2C in the past 20 years, and where
>the whole ecosystem is thought to be undergoing a "regime shift",
>or a fundamental alteration in the interaction of its component
>species. "Think of the North Sea as an engine, and plankton as
>the fuel driving it," said Euan Dunn of the RSPB, one of the
>world's leading experts on the interaction of fish and seabirds.
>"The fuel mix has changed so radically in the past 20 years, as a
>result of climate change, that the whole engine is now
>spluttering and starting to malfunction. All of the animals in
>the food web above the plankton, first the sandeels, then the
>larger fish like cod, and ultimately the seabirds, are starting
>to be affected."
>
>Research last year clearly showed that the higher the
>temperature, the less sandeels could maintain their population
>level, said Dr Dunn. "The young sandeels are simply not
>surviving."
>
>Although over-fishing of sandeels has caused breeding failures in
>the past, the present situation could not be blamed on fishing,
>he said. The Shetland sandeel fishery was catching so few fish
>that it was closed as a precautionary measure earlier this year.
>"Climate change is a far more likely explanation."
>
>The spectacular seabird populations of the Northern Isles have a
>double importance. They are of great value scientifically,
>holding, for example, the world's biggest populations of great
>skuas. And they are of enormous value to Orkney and Shetland
>tourism, being the principal draw for many visitors. The national
>and international significance of what has happened is only just
>beginning to dawn on the wider political and scientific
>community, but some leading figures are already taking it on
>board.
>
>"This is an incredible event," said Tony Juniper, director of
>Friends of the Earth. "The catastrophe [of these] seabirds is
>just a foretaste of what lies ahead.
>
>"It shows that climate change is happening now, [with]
>devastating consequences here in Britain, and it shows that
>reducing the pollution causing changes to the earth's climate
>should now be the global number one political priority."
