Author: Jenny Woodman

Jenny is a science writer, editor and educator based in the Pacific Northwest.

Categories
Exploring Ocean Worlds

NOAA’s Chief Scientist Charts Course Toward a New Blue Economy (IEEE Earthzine, March 2016)

From energy to forecasting capabilities, oceans hold answers to big questions. Image Credit: NOAA

In 2016, I interviewed Dr. Rick Spinrad for IEEE Earthzine; Sprinrad was serving as chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the country’s premier agency on climate science. In May of 2021, President Biden announced that he would be nominating Spinrad to lead NOAA. I thought back on this conversation, where I learned so very much, and thought it would be worth sharing again.

Dr. Richard Spinrad is a busy fellow. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) first chief scientist in 18 years, he’s a man on a mission. Spinrad attends conferences, goes to meetings on Capitol Hill, speaks with industry players, and talks to stakeholders all over the country.

Spinrad speaks passionately about ocean observations, a changing climate, and a new emerging blue economy where information potentially translates to money in the bank.

While a concrete definition of the blue economy is still emerging, it is clear that it represents a healthy marriage between the economic and the sustainable – a shift away from a solely extraction-based approach to one that considers the health of our ocean ecosystems both now and in the future.

When asked for examples of how ocean data can be transformative, the floodgates open. Spinrad and his colleagues say the ocean services community could be riding a wave to incredible opportunities for economic development, from oil spill prevention and cleanup to ocean temperature forecasts, coastal land management and pharmaceutical research.

For example, harmful algal blooms (HABs) or red tides in the Gulf Coast region produce aerosols, which cause major respiratory problems for many people. NOAA is monitoring HABs and collecting copious amounts of data. Spinrad sees this as an opportunity for the research community to develop HAB forecasts, which can be used just like weather forecasts for effective decision-making.

“Like a weather forecast, it doesn’t tell you take an umbrella today; it tells you it will rain today. It’s up to you to decide, will I take an umbrella or not?” he explained.

From there, a third party can use the HAB forecast and build a tailored product specifically for the public health sector to help clinics and hospitals know when to order extra supplies and prep for an influx of patients with severe asthma.

On the West Coast, where shellfish are part of a $260 million dollar aquaculture industry, integrated observations have helped hatcheries monitor corrosive waters caused by ocean acidification, which upwells and moves into the bays and estuaries.

Ocean acidification is the result of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere absorbed by the ocean; it is also part of natural cycles. The phenomenon negatively impacts early development of calcifying organisms like clams and oysters, and new research suggests that coral reefs are seriously endangered by corrosive waters as well.

A network of buoys, sensors, and observing tools fall under the umbrella of NOAA’s U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), which also is connected to regional networks around the globe. By working with NOAA and ocean researchers, shellfish farmers have been able to use IOOS and regional data to adapt their practices and stay in business in spite of changing ocean chemistry as a result of ocean acidification.

This image shows how a pteropod, a small ocean snail many ocean critters rely on for food, is affected by ocean acidification. Image Credit: NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

NOAA’s vastly improved forecasting was evident in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy, which wrought havoc up and down the eastern seaboard, killing 145 people and causing $50 billion in property damage. Spinrad says spot-on forecasts enabled retailers and transportation officials to redirect shipments during the hurricane, allowing goods to make it to the shelves in time for Christmas in 2012. 

To Spinrad, data and predictive services like these are the currency of the realm. While government agencies and research institutions are collecting tremendous amounts of data, given limited available resources, an agency like NOAA cannot develop all these consumer products. However, the data is ready for some enterprising person to turn information into a product that people want and need.

In October 2015, at an xPrize panel on using ocean data to the fullest, Spinrad told the room full of industry leaders that NOAA collects 20 terabytes of data a day. There are, however, cultural obstacles to turning this data into services. According to Spinrad, while other research-based industries like medical, engineering, and tech have been capitalizing on the fruits of their labors for years, the ocean research community may have not fully embraced this way of thinking, yet.

“One might argue that we’re in the same place the engineering community was decades ago and it’s going to take a recognition that by commercializing, by monetizing our research, we are not giving up the posture that we have in basic research,” Spinrad said.

In the early days of engineering, research was driven by a curiosity to understand how things worked, but as that research unearthed discoveries that led to things people wanted, like automobiles and superfast computer processors, there was a public demand for those products. This demand fundamentally transformed engineering in many ways.

He added: “So the examples we’ve just talked about don’t have a lot of pull just yet. There’s not a demand and a pounding on the table for operationalized harmful algal bloom forecasts around the country.”

Spinrad laughing at the MTS/IEEE OCEANS ’15 conference in Maryland. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

Of course, Spinrad understands the pull of basic or fundamental research. “There’s a romance,” he said. “I don’t have any colleagues that I can really think of who went into oceanography to make big money.” He adds that there is nothing wrong with setting out to make money, but he knows many researchers want to be on the leading edge of fundamental discoveries.

He was lured to oceanography by a failed eighth-grade science project and a fantastic New York City public school teacher. Spinrad set out to build an echo sounder, which he planned to use in the East River in New York City. His teacher put him in contact with an oceanography graduate student at Columbia University and pushed him to move forward with the project.

“Well, it failed miserably and I was hooked,” he said with a characteristic grin. “The teacher could have given me an F. He didn’t. He asked me to explain why I thought it wasn’t working. I was fascinated.”

Spinrad also recalls making his father bring home vials of water from each and every business trip. He would boil the sample down and look at the precipitate, hoping to compare one part of the country to another. Although he now suspects his busy father may have simply added salt to tap water, he was fascinated nonetheless.

It may just be this sort of patient persistence combined with his enthusiasm for science that makes Spinrad the right person to get people to see the enormous untapped potential in ocean research.With half of the anti-cancer drug discoveries coming from marine products and marine organisms, and millions of undiscovered species in our ocean, he says ocean services could see a future similar to that of his colleagues in other fields like engineering.In order to make this happen, society will need to make a substantial commitment to sustained ocean observation. This is an area where he sees dramatic room for improvement.

At an MTS/IEEE OCEANS ’15 panel, Chris Sabine, lab director for NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, spoke about ocean acidification and the huge expanses of ocean for which there are few measurements. Sabine is a leader in ocean acidification research, a phenomenon that was little understood 10 years ago, but presents real concerns today. He warns that ocean acidification “is something happening right now, not something we are predicting for the future, and it will only continue as long as we continue to produce carbon dioxide.”

Sabine expressed a need for incredibly durable instruments able to detect small variations in waters out in the open ocean where pH levels are harder to understand. The coastal waters have much more variation and more detectable levels so sensors can be designed around affordability.
Spinrad concurred: “We’re woefully deficient in our observations and monitoring capacity in the oceans in general.”

Without sustained observations, it may not be possible to understand processes like ocean acidification, because critical data will be missing– data that can be used for modeling what is happening in the carbon system.
Spinrad says there aren’t arguments against sustaining NOAA National Weather Service’s Doplar Radar system every year, because people understand the economic impacts of weather on transportation, commerce, tourism and hospitality. Add in the cost of rebuilding communities after major disasters, and people understand why an investment is needed in weather observation satellites and sensors.

Oceans observations are not at that point yet, but Spinrad sees this emerging blue economy, based on information and predictive services, as the way to get much-needed support for ocean observations.
He emphasizes that researchers have only been looking at something like ocean acidification for a few years. It’s happening everywhere, but they haven’t been able to study it in places like the Arctic, because it isn’t easy to make observations underneath the ice.

Data from more than 3,500 Argo floats are combined with satellite data to provide accurate information to guide research and decision-making. Image Credit: NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

“Imagine if we said that we were going to provide the weather forecast for the lower 48 states by having one temperature measurement every five states. That’s about the density of observations we’ve got from the Argo float system that’s drifting around the world’s oceans,” he argues. “It looks great when you’re looking at it on a map – it’s got all sorts of dots on it, but it’s really not that well-populated.”

Spinrad remains optimistic and sees positive momentum based on the number of young people who are interested and passionate about addressing problems like ocean acidification.

“I’m encouraged as an old guy,” he joked before getting serious. “I’m encouraged to see that the next generation of researchers understands this and is willing to invest in this, and that the federal government and other agencies are willing to put resources towards this as well.”

Ultimately, Spinrad would rather see a substantial investment in sustained and robust observations to address problems now, rather than leave them for future generations. And, a new blue economy may the best hope for making that happen.

Categories
Exploring Ocean Worlds

Solve for ‘x’

A marbled murrelet in breeding plumage takes flight. Image Credit: Dan Cushing and Kim Nelson/Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project
A marbled murrelet in breeding plumage takes flight.
A marbled murrelet in breeding plumage takes flight. Image Credit: Dan Cushing and Kim Nelson/Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project

Endless miles of bluffs and beaches shelter sleepy towns along the wild Pacific Coast of North America. The ocean spreads away from sand and rock in an implacable expanse. Birds float lazily beyond the breakers. Gulls wheel and scream overhead. Sandpipers and peeps dash about madly at surf’s edge, spinning in unison in the air. And, under cover of early-morning semi-darkness, marbled murrelets leave the ocean and fly to the trees.

The landscape is ruled by the stoic height and girth of trees. In the early morning fog, it is easy to miss a fast-flying bird the color of tree bark as it trades places on the nest with its partner and settles into its 24-hour egg-incubating shift. 

Marbled murrelets forage for small fish in near-shore waters of the Pacific coast from Alaska to Central California. They nest in late seral forests (although a small percentage of more-northern birds nest on the ground) and, despite increased forest conservation over the last twenty years, their population continues to decline in some regions of their range. 

The presumed equation: protected forest = thriving murrelets

In 2017, Oregon researchers began a telemetry study designed to learn more about marbled murrelets. They wanted to know where they feed, rest, breed, and nest. How do they use forest and ocean resources, and, by extension, how can humans better manage those resources for their continued survival? In 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented to protect coastal fir, hemlock, and cedar forests on federal lands as a means of protecting species while supporting local economic sustainability. The intent was to prevent further decline in protected species like the marbled murrelet, but just protecting the forest didn’t help these mystifying seabirds.

We rarely connect the salty realm of waves and wind with moss-muffled forests. But all seabirds must, at some point, leave their food source, and come to land to breed and raise young. Many hard-core pelagic birds, those who spend their lives on the wing over open ocean, nest in colonies on remote islands or inaccessible cliffs. Some nest in rock crevices or excavate burrows. Inexplicably, and defying all known logic of seabirds for generations of observers, marbled murrelets nest alone in the forest, laying their eggs in a mossy divot on a branch large enough to be its own old-growth tree. Partly due to this unexpected forest connection, they were the last North American bird species to have their nesting habits described – in 1974.

The availability of big trees with mossy branches large enough to hold an egg or a growing nestling can limit murrelet reproduction as old-growth forest succumbs to fire and harvesting.
The availability of big trees with mossy branches large enough to hold an egg or a growing nestling can limit murrelet reproduction as old-growth forest succumbs to fire and harvesting. Image credit: Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project

More than a decade after the first nest was recorded in California, Kim Nelson was the first person to find a marbled murrelet nest in Oregon. She was conducting species-specific murrelet surveys in the Oregon Coast Range for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Today, Nelson is a senior faculty research assistant at Oregon State University working with assistant professor Jim Rivers on the Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project, a multi-year telemetry project using radio transmitter tags to track murrelets along the Oregon coast. Working as an independent university research team, Nelson says the telemetry project focuses on increasing knowledge about murrelets in order to provide land managers with the information necessary to make sound management decisions that will help sustain the birds.

The “capture crew,” a highly trained group of researchers out of California, that specialize in capturing the murrelets on the water at night.
The “capture crew,” a highly trained group of researchers out of California, that specialize in capturing the murrelets on the water at night. Image Credit: Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project

Capturing murrelets off the Oregon coast each spring, the team attaches VHF radio tags to the birds, tracking them through the breeding season. According to Nelson, VHF batteries last only about three months, so there is no winter data, and the murrelets’ small size prevents them from carrying heavier battery packs, solar or satellite tags. Rivers believes the work will provide useful information in the context of forest management. Knowledge gained through tagging birds helps to better understand the species’ needs for survival and helps us manage for those needs. 

“Tagging birds at sea, they lead us inland and give unbiased data,” Rivers says, because the birds take the researchers to their nests and foraging grounds, wherever they may be. The murrelet team has not caught as many birds as their USFS research permit allows in any of the years of the study and never as many birds as they would like. Rivers states, a bit ruefully, that this embodies the species, “Not easy to work on, on the ocean or inland.”

Senior faculty researcher Kim Nelson and Principle Investigator Matt Betts collecting murrelet data.
Kim Nelson and Matt Betts collecting murrelet data. Betts, along with Nelson, Rivers and Dan Roby are the four principle investigators for the project. Image Credit: Oregon State University & Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project 

The variables

A substantive lack of information about this unique species makes it both fascinating and frustrating. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of North America marbled murrelet species account, written by Nelson, reads like a confidential case profile, “no information,” “limited information,” ”few data,” “unknown.” Lacking fundamental knowledge makes management and protection difficult.

Meanwhile, Rivers reels off a rapid-fire list of facts. For example, because male and female murrelets have identical plumage, there is no reliable way to determine sex in the field, even with the bird in your hand–blood samples can later be analyzed in a lab for sex-specific genetic markers. Murrelets can’t be aged, but, he says, based on a relationship between body size and longevity in other auk family members, murrelets are estimated to live 15 to 20 years. There is also no data on their first-year survival rate–if a nest is successful and a chick fledges, how likely is it to survive through its first year and beyond? As with age, this can only be estimated based on other auks.

Able to fly up to 100 mph, and traveling as much as 50 miles inland to nest, marbled murrelets often approach the forest in low-light conditions, making detection challenging. Within a day or two of hatching, the chick is left alone while the parents go to sea, and unlike many birds, Rivers continues, they don’t regurgitate food for their young, rather, they carry whole fish from the ocean to the nest, one fish at a time. Adult birds will sit on the water in the dark, fish in bill, waiting until the light is right before venturing to the nest. Making several roundtrips each day–a discovery Nelson and other researchers made through detailed nest observations in earlier studies–the adults feed the chick until it leaves the nest and makes its first flight directly to the ocean, regardless of the distance. Some fledglings crash land on this inaugural flight, never reaching their destination. 

All of this–breeding, nesting, feeding, commuting–requires a tremendous amount of energy. Long-lived birds with low reproductive rates, a murrelet pair lays only one egg each spring. A single egg that falls from a tree or falls prey to a predator may not be replaced. For a bird that weighs less than two-thirds of your morning 12-ounce latte, flying multiple roundtrips daily, with the fattest fish you can carry, to feed a chick that needs to go from egg to flight in a month takes a toll. The physical cost of breeding and raising a chick is high for murrelets. If ocean conditions do not allow for plentiful fish, an egg, and even a chick, will be abandoned; waiting a year for better conditions is a viable evolutionary strategy. 

According to Nelson, earlier nest findings in Oregon not only showed that murrelets nest in old-growth as anticipated, but also in younger trees and those deformed by dwarf mistletoe, a parasitic plant commonly called witch’s brooms. And, unexpectedly, the current telemetry project found a murrelet nest in a big leaf maple. Among 400-some nests recorded throughout the murrelets’ range prior to this study, only two were found outside of the targeted coniferous tree species, and these were both in British Columbia. This new data implies that while murrelets rarely nest in deciduous trees, they are not restricted to conifers. This means both more potential nesting sites and possibly the need for conservation of more diverse forest habitat.     

Rivers says data indicate murrelets are known to return to the same forest stands where they nested previously. They don’t nest in colonies as many seabirds do; however, where there is suitable habitat, they will nest in small groups, with more than one pair in a stand. Nelson adds that as the forest becomes fragmented by timber harvest and road building, being more tightly packed into stands could compromise their nesting strategy of staying hidden and secretive. This may make them increasingly vulnerable to predators, and could potentially affect nesting success. Being able to quantify where murrelets are nesting and how they are using the forest is a valuable benefit of tagging birds and could offer important information for forest managers determining what should be cut or conserved.

Filling in the unknowns

In 2018, a remote camera monitoring a tagged murrelet’s nest near the forest edge recorded nest predation by a red-tailed hawk, a bird more typically found in open country. Additionally, corvids, a family of birds including ravens, crows, and jays, are smart, keen observers, and relentless opportunists that commonly follow roads searching for easy food. In California, where suitable habitat is mostly limited to state and national parks, a campaign called Crumb Clean reminds human visitors to the forest to remove all food and trash to help prevent corvid populations from increasing and to deter predation. 

Without tracking birds to their nests, researchers and resource managers would have little insight into the shifting dynamics of predator-prey interactions relative to the changing forest structure. Understanding how forest structure affects nesting success allows managers to plan for roads, harvest, and recreation with less impact.

Rivers hypothesizes that murrelets in California, Oregon, and the Pacific coast of Washington may be less likely to breed in any given year than other murrelet populations. He believes this is partly due to living on the open ocean rather than in resource-rich and protected bays. Adding another stress factor, like reduced habitat or increased predation risk, can potentially further decrease the likelihood of murrelet nesting success. 

The numbers, as Nelson laid them out, are a bit staggering. In the first year of this study, just over 60 birds were tagged; none of them nested. The following year, 2018, nearly 80 birds were tagged, eight nested and five of these nests failed. While 2019 numbers are still being compiled, all indications are that marked birds on the Oregon coast did not initiate nests in the last three years. Rivers states that knowing there are some years when few or no birds nest is an important finding and helps support the idea that not breeding in a year with poor conditions was, historically, a viable survival strategy. Nelson wonders whether this will remain a viable strategy with the modern challenges of habitat loss, climate change, and changes in prey availability. 

Solving for ‘x’

Although new data can create more questions than answers, according to Nelson, tracking tagged birds leads the murrelet team into the forest and to nests, providing new insight that chips away at the mystery a little more each season. “There are a limited number of seabirds that fly inland to nest and with this unique strategy of occurring in both the terrestrial and marine environment,” Nelson said. 

Rivers takes a minute to look up the name of this strategy, “I want to make sure I get this right,” he says, “it’s called habitat split strategy” and it’s important to the murrelet issue. Habitat split strategy, he continues, is relatively common among birds. We see it in action annually—birds need nesting sites and ample food for breeding and rearing young, so they move to the nutrient-rich north for the breeding season. When northern resources are frozen or dormant, they find a more suitable seasonal home somewhere south of their breeding range. These split habitats are divided both spatially and temporally.

The difference for marbled murrelets is their need for forest and ocean simultaneously. For murrelet breeding to be successful, two significantly different habitats must align both spatially and temporally and solving for ‘x’ becomes a bit more complicated.

Tamara Enz is a writer, photographer, and biologist who aspires to create images of the world, both written and photographic, that draw people into the untrammeled spaces, where she hopes they leave tiny pieces of their hearts. Follow her on Twitter @TamaraEnz

Read More

Far from Land: The Mysterious Life of Seabirds by Michael Brooke

Status and Trend of Marbled Murrelet Populations and Nesting Habitat by Gary A. Falxa and Martin G. Raphael, technical coordinators

Flying Under the Radar by Nick Houtman

From Sea to Tree, Scientists Are Tracking Marbled Murrelets With Rising Precision by Juliet Grable

Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet by Maria Ruth 

Categories
Exploring Ocean Worlds

Ocean Reads

Nehalem Bay, at the confluence of the Nehalem River and Pacific Ocean. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Nehalem Bay, at the confluence of the Nehalem River and Pacific Ocean. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

Books

Jaime Green and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2022

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katherine K. Wilkinson’s (editors) All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

Bathsheba Demuth’s Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

Robert MacFarland’s Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Philip Hoare’s The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea

Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness

Nick Pyerson’s Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures

Ben Goldfarb’s Eager: The Surprising, Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter (We know this isn’t technically an “ocean” read, but the health of our watersheds certainly plays a role in healthy ocean ecosystems, and let’s face it: beavers are super cool.)

Elizabeth Rush’s The Rising

Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind (also see A Silent Spring)

Robert Kunzig’s Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science

Peter Godfrey Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Sylvia Earle’s The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One

Carl Safina’s Eye of an Albatross

Articles and Multimedia

Podcasts & Podcast Episodes

Categories
Exploring Ocean Worlds

Questioning Nature

The author's son enjoying nature and asking questions.
Trying to catch a Monarch butterfly near Lac La Belle, Michigan. Image Credit: Kelley Christensen

Wherever you are, no matter how lonely,

The world offers itself to your imagination,

Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

Over and over announcing your place

In the family of things.

— Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

It always begins with a question. And as any parent of a young child knows, if you give a mouse a cookie . . . questions lead to more questions. Sometimes it can be exhausting, having just answered one inquiry to be instantly buffeted by the next.

Yet, remember the nature of questions; remember their parentage — joy and wonder. Questions are the seeds of stories, and stories, as we know, are not limited to flights of fancy, but help us understand the world around us. Science and story are partners for building understanding.

“What does a monarch butterfly eat?”

Watching a monarch caterpillar munching its way across a milkweed leaf, my son makes the connection that the caterpillar will fatten itself, spin a chrysalis, and then, as if by magic, emerge a butterfly. Out tumble the questions like the gust front of an approaching summer storm, metamorphizing from one to the next.

“Do wasps eat caterpillars?”

“How long before it becomes a butterfly?”

“How far will a monarch butterfly fly?”

“How do they find their way?”

“Can we go to Mexico to see the butterflies?”

Remember that questions are opportunities, the threads of magic carpets lifted on the winds of exploration. Instilling in a child a sense of wonder and inquiry they’ll carry with them their entire lives is a delicate matter: Provide enough information to keep the child asking questions; don’t wander too far into the weeds and induce boredom instead.

“Is this a blue jay egg?”

Yesterday, we found the egg in our garden, nestled between the broad leaves of a Hosta and a prickly phlox. The egg was a shade of green between mint and sage, dotted by olive speckles. A few weeks before we’d witnessed two blue jays building a nest in the high-up crook of a maple tree that borders our yard. The pair swooped this way and that, plucking twigs from the lilac bushes for building material. The maple is densely leafed out now, so it’s hard to see any birds in the tree, but we now have proof of blue jay progeny.

Because an eggshell is a fragile, impermanent thing, I encouraged my son to sketch the egg and write about it in his nature journal — a blank notebook we bring on outings along with his “adventure backpack”. The backpack also holds colored pencils, a rock hammer and safety glasses, a compass, and a jeweler’s magnifying loupe. My son, at age 7, is more inclined to reach for the rock hammer — smashing things is fun! — than the journal, but when he does draw and write in his journal, I see in him a deep reservoir of concentration and attention to detail. Even now his drawings are far more detailed than anything I recall drawing when I was his age.

I also bring a small notebook on our adventures and join my son in nature journaling. I enjoy the presence in the moment journaling affords, the tight focus on tiny details. Trout lilies, paper birch, and the distinct red stones against the deep blue water of Lake Superior are some of the sketches that populate my journal.

Journaling about the blue jay egg. Image Credit: Kelley Christensen

After finding the egg, we reach for the illustrated kid’s guide to Michigan birds and flip to the entry on blue jays. Indeed the egg we found matches the book’s description. Books like these are wonderful teaching tools; we also have a wildflower identification guide we frequently bring on hikes. We enjoy being nature sleuths, observation illuminating the names of things.

“What’s on the other side of the lake?”

We live just a few miles from the shores of Lake Superior; our house is perched on a peninsula that juts into what we really should call an inland sea. We humans are limited by language; why do we give such a small name — lake — to a body of water that by surface area is the largest of its kind on Earth? Better to call the lake by its Ojibwe name: Gitchigami, the “Great Sea”.

How do we, with our limited language, describe this glittering northern lake? Words fail to record her many moods and colors, her waves and stony beaches studded with white pine. Sometimes calm and glassy, lake surface and horizon indistinct, expanding the bounds of gravity by blurry the demarcation of Earth and sky. Sometimes storm-raised, slate-colored waves beat against the shore with such ferocity one wonders if Superior will ever be calm again. And sometimes, at sunset, striated with rose and the sky’s limitless blue reflected, loon calls traveling across the water.

How do we, when words fail us, pass on such beauty to our children? How do we pass on the knowledge that we are but stewards of this sacred sea? How do we inspire in our children a deep love of place and the desire to protect this vast northern lake already abused by mining and atmospheric deposition of outsourced industry pollution?

Take your child to the sacred places where you live, whether Gitchigami or the stream that runs through your community, the tree groves on the edge of town or to the pothole lakes of the prairie with their citizens crane. Show your child their place in the family of things, small, but never insignificant.

Kelley Christensen is a science writer living in northern Michigan, where she feels blessed for the opportunity to learn new things every day and call it work. When she’s not writing, gardening, hiking or skiing, you’ll find her knitting on the beach. Follow her on Twitter @kjhchristensen 

READ MORE

A Case for Wonder by Christopher Norment

eBird by Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman

The Boy’s Book of Adventure by Michele Lecreux & Celia Gallais* (*Caveat: We don’t love the title of this book because of the gendering, but it’s a neat little book once you get past that. There’s a Girl’s Book of Adventure, too, though again, there are blatant gendering issues.)

“Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” by Wendell Berry

The Raft by Jim LaMarche

The Pond by Jim LaMarche

Categories
Arctic Change

The Darkness of August

Chick ready to fledge is waiting for the safety of darkness before leaving Cooper Island. Image Credit: Mike Morrison
Chick ready to fledge is waiting for the safety of darkness before leaving Cooper Island. Image Credit: Mike Morrison

While much has changed over the course of the 45 summers I have spent on Cooper Island, as warming from anthropogenic carbon emissions has modified the Arctic’s snow and ice habitats, one thing has remained constant. The sun is always above the horizon for 24 hours when I arrive in early June and it does not set until precisely August 2.

The importance and impact of that constant daylight is hard to overstate. When I arrive on the island I am not constrained by the day-night/light-dark cycle that I just left in Seattle, and I can work on whatever schedule I like while setting up camp and conducting initial colony censuses. Equally important is the high serotonin level associated with the constant daylight, which increases the optimism one typically has when starting a field season at any latitude. That optimism is also amplified by seeing the guillemots, some of whom I have known for over two decades, initiate breeding.

After the sun sets in early August, “nighttime” for the following two weeks consists of an increasing twilight period until the third week of the month, when the sky becomes dark for the first time since before my arrival. The loss of daylight is the first clear signal that the summer is ending. Despite the major impact on fieldwork and my psychological state, I used to welcome the arrival of August darkness as it allowed the guillemots to complete their breeding season. Black Guillemot young fledge under the cover of darkness. After 35 days in a nest cavity, the chicks depart the colony independent of their parents. They fly off at the darkest time of night and quickly move offshore to reduce the risk of predation by diurnal shoreline predators like gulls, jaegers or falcons.

In recent years, however, the darkness of August has been a different experience for both the colony and for me. In the first two decades of the study, when the colony was almost three times its current size and breeding success was high, large numbers of nestlings would fledge every night. My dawn nest checks during those years found many just-vacated nesting cavities which provided daily evidence of that year’s breeding success and the promise that future breeding seasons would see large numbers of birds returning to their natal colony on Cooper Island.

However, the period of August darkness became quite different as the Arctic warmed. Starting in 2002, when annual summer sea ice melt notably increased, we began to see polar bears on Cooper Island. Polar bears on land are active during the nighttime hours and it was not uncommon to wake up in late August to find that bears had flipped over the wooden nest boxes and consumed guillemot chicks, sometimes wiping out half of the colony in one night. We addressed bear predation by replacing the wooden nest boxes with bear-proof plastic cases in 2012, but the continuing loss of ice that drives the bears to land each summer is also making the guillemots’ preferred ice-associated prey, Arctic cod, unavailable to parents for feeding their young.

In the 2019 breeding season that is just ending, decreased prey availability due to both a lack of sea ice and high sea water temperature underlie the death of 75 percent of the nestlings. While hatching success was good, only 25 percent of the 130 nestlings survived until late August. In past years when sea ice was just offshore and Arctic cod were abundant, over 75 percent of the nestlings would be expected to fledge. This year’s nestling mortality occurred mainly in late July and early August, when nearby ocean waters were so warm (up to 9 C or 48 F) that even the less preferred alternative prey, sculpin, were scarce. Guillemots typically have two-chick broods with the younger chick being fed less during periods of low prey abundance. This year none of the younger siblings survived past early August, the first year without bear predation that no pair was able to fledge two chicks.

A Black Guillemot chick considers taking the big leap and leaving the safety of the island. Video Credit: George Divoky

The small number of surviving nestlings are now fledging. Having monitored them since they were eggs, including weighing them daily during the five-week nestling period, I have come to know them as individuals and am pleased when I open a nest case to find the surviving chick had left the previous night. But I am also aware that the extremely low breeding success this year, coupled with similar low success in the past two years, will cause the number of breeding pairs in the colony to continue to decline. Although the few chicks that have fledged in recent years can be expected to return to Cooper Island in two to three years, if they survive the ongoing loss of ice in their winter habitat in the Bering Sea, realistically the Cooper Island colony of Black Guillemots can never be expected to regain its past numbers nor its past success.

In earlier years both the bright start of a field season, as birds laid their eggs, and the darkness of late summer, when chicks would fly off into the night, could raise one’s spirits. This year, the darkness of August has been a period of melancholy and uncertainty of how long the colony might persist.

This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 45th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

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Dead Heat by National Snow and Ice Data Center

Exit, Pursued by Bear by George Divoky

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Arctic Change

Loss of Sea Ice Takes Its Toll on Seabirds

Three visitors to Cooper Island Arctic Observatory see firsthand how rapidly changes are taking place.
Pierre-Loup Jan, Katie Morrison, George Divoky, and Maria Coryell-Martin in August of 2019 on Cooper Island. Image Credit: George Divoky

The positive signs of colony size and breeding effort of the Black Guillemots on Cooper Island in June were too good to last.

After very high hatching success, the decreased ice and increased water temperatures took their toll as parents were unable to find prey in the warm, ice-free waters. Rapidly shifting ocean temperatures provided some days of good growth, but currently only one third of chicks are still alive. As the mortality was unfolding, we shared it with a reporter from the Washington Post for an article describing the impacts of climate change in Alaska in 2019.

The authors note that, “The early retreat of sea ice from the Bering and Chukchi seas has led to a jump in sea surface temperatures, altering weather patterns and upending the lives of residents who typically depend on the ice cover for hunting and fishing. It’s also affecting native species, including seals and seabirds.” In the article I describe the high rate of chick mortality from the loss of sea ice, which limits guillemots’ access to their preferred prey, Arctic cod.

Helping to monitor the changes that are rapidly occurring this summer are a Seattle science teacher, an expeditionary artist, and a French demographer. Pierre-Loup Jan, is a population dynamics modeler from the Centre d’étude biologique de Chizé, a local branch of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, analyzing the Cooper Island database as part of the Sentinels of Sea Ice (SENSEI) project lead by Christophe Barbraud and Yan Ropert-Coudert.

The SENSEI project aims at fighting against the reheating of the poles which have drastic consequences on the sea ice (decrease of the surface of the sea ice in Arctic and in contrario increase in Antarctica). Video Credit: BNP Paribas Foundation

On the island for the second time is Katie Morrison, board president for Friends of Cooper Island and an elementary school science educator in Seattle, WA. Maria Coryell-Martin, an expeditionary artist from Port Townsend, WA, is exploring the landscape and research of Cooper Island through watercolor sketches. Together, Katie and Maria are working on an interdisciplinary exhibit and educational materials.

Even in their short time on the island, they have witnessed dramatic changes and the impact of a rapidly melting Arctic.  

This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 45th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

Read more

Alaska’s sweltering summer is ‘basically off the charts’ by Matthew Cappucci, Juliet Eilperin, Andrew Freedman, and Brady Dennis

SENSEI: 8 Animal Species to Understand Global Warming by BNP Paribas

Europe’s Heat Wave Moves North by National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

Satellite Observations of Arctic Change Overview by NSIDC

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Arctic Change

Mourning a Lost Relationship–My Half-Century Association with Sea Ice

Loss of sea ice threatens Arctic seabirds who depend on ice for foraging for preferred prey, Arctic Cod. Image Credit: George Divoky
Loss of sea ice threatens Black Guillemots who depend on ice for foraging for preferred prey, Arctic Cod. Image Credit: George Divoky

Sea ice, to a great extent, defines the Arctic. My first recollection of thinking about the Arctic was in elementary school when I looked at the white expanse at the top of a globe that depicted the extent of perennial sea ice. It was hard to conceive there was a place so cold it had an ice-covered ocean year-round.

Years later, in September of 1970, my personal relationship with Arctic sea ice began. The Coast Guard icebreaker I had boarded at Point Barrow to conduct seabird observations off Prudhoe Bay was prevented from traveling east to Prudhoe Bay due to heavy ice sea ice. The advancing ice then pushed us south and out of the Chukchi Sea in mid-October.

Images show Cooper Island surrounded by sea ice on June 26, 2019. Image Credits: NASA’s MODIS satellite (left) and from University of Bremen (right)

My connection with sea ice became more direct and intimate beginning in 1975, when I began my study of the Black Guillemot colony on Cooper Island. The island has always been surrounded by sea ice at the start of my field season in early June. In the past, thick and stable shorefast ice provided a way to transport gear and personnel to the island by snow machines pulling sleds, allowing us to avoid chartering an aircraft. My fresh water was supplied by snowdrifts on the sea ice, which persisted longer than those on land, and then later in season I would melt multi-year sea ice that used to wash up on shore throughout the summer. The pack ice was present right next to the island or a short distance offshore all summer. I realized that the proximity of the sea ice also meant that polar bears might be close to the Island, but the numerous seals seen resting on the ice meant the bears were likely well fed.

Images show Cooper Island that by July 6, 2019, all the sea ice around Cooper Island had melted. Image Credits: NASA’s MODIS satellite (left) and from University of Bremen (right)

As my reliance on, and relationship with, Arctic sea ice was developing in the late 20th Century, I had no idea that its rapid decline in the 21st Century would become one of the most visible impacts of global warming. I followed the monitoring of the sea ice decline when I was not in the field, but during summer, I experienced the direct impacts of that decline. I can no longer travel to Cooper Island on shorefast ice, I need to gather rain for fresh water since multi-year ice has become a rarity, and I now regularly share the Island with polar bears stranded on land due to the loss of their sea ice habitat. The latter impact now has me carrying a shotgun wherever I go on the island and living in a cabin I acquired in 2003 after polar bears had trashed my tents.

This graphic shows sea ice extents for several years — combined Chukchi and Beaufort sea ice extent now tied with 2008 for lowest in the 41-year National Snow and Ice Data Center record. Image Credit: Alaska Center for Climate Assessment Policy/Rick Thoman

Of course, it is the effect of sea ice loss on Mandt’s Black Guillemot, an ice-obligate seabird, that is the prominent ecological change that has been documented by this study. The subspecies is adapted to feeding on Arctic Cod and other prey found in the cold waters under and next to sea ice. For years, Cooper Island was a nesting location adjacent to ice-covered waters that, based on the colony’s breeding success, provided an abundance of food. However, since the turn of the century, increasing summer sea ice melt has meant parents often have to forage in relatively warm ice-free waters. In the absence of Arctic cod, the necessary switch to lower-quality and less-abundant prey has had a major negative impact on nestling growth and survival.

This June and through early July, sea ice cover in the immediate area of Cooper Island was high, which likely played a part in the good start to the guillemot’s breeding season. However, now the distance from Cooper Island to sea ice is greater than it has ever been at the start of the nestling growth period, with ice extent throughout the Arctic being at record low levels. Findings from earlier years with greatly decreased ice and warm ocean temperatures, such as 2017, are cause for concern about what the upcoming weeks of 2019 may hold for the birds currently breeding on the Island and their young who need regular deliveries of high-quality prey. This region has never been more ice-free and the immediate challenges faced by the guillemots have never been greater.

This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 45th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

Read More

Arctic Report Card: Update for 2018 by NOAA’s Arctic Program

Can These Seabirds Adapt Fast Enough to Survive a Melting Arctic by Hannah Waters

Europe’s Heatwave is About to Bake the Arctic by Andrew Freedman

Categories
Arctic Change

Incubation Period Underway

In previous years, nonbreeding guillemots tend to roost by the pond. Image Credit: Katie Morrison
In previous years, nonbreeding guillemots tend to roost by the pond. Image Credit: Katie Morrison

The Black Guillemots on Cooper Island continued to show signs of a turnaround from the poor breeding season of 2018 as egg laying and incubations have occurred in over 75 nests this year, compared to only 25 last year. The breeding population saw the recruitment of 20 birds that had fledged from the island in past years but had yet to breed. This is important since it shows that even with the decreased reproductive success and poor ice conditions of recent years, some birds are surviving to breeding age (typically 3-years of age) and returning to their natal colony, Cooper Island. A major surprise was the return of a bird that fledged from the colony in 2012 and had not been seen since.

  • Breeding oair on nest cast. Image Credit: George Divoky

Unlike last year when daily nest checks found recently laid eggs being abandoned by parents, this year has found all eggs being regularly incubated. Incubation is the least energetically demanding stage of breeding as the parent birds, which both incubate, take shifts of approximately 12 hours each day, having the remainder of the day to forage for fish. Last year’s large-scale desertion of nests with eggs indicated birds were either starting incubation in poor condition or encountering low availability of prey during incubation. Discovering the potential reasons for the differences between the last two years will have to wait until the fall when I have internet access to environmental data.

While our daily nest checks have provided hope for high hatching success this year, other observations while we walk around the colony are causes for concern. Most noticeable is the almost complete lack of guillemots sitting outside near nest sites or at the edge of the pond in the center of the colony, where guillemots have typically roosted when not incubating eggs or feeding young. The daily period of colony attendance, approximately midnight to noon, used to have birds throughout the colony, while this year we see only the occasional lone bird or nonbreeding pair. There is little visual evidence that the island supports a colony of over 150 birds.  Additionally, in early July we experienced a rapid disappearance of sea ice with the island being nearly surrounded by ice to no ice in sight in 2-3 days. Both of these factors suggest that, despite the positive indicators seen in breeding effort and nest attendance, there are reasons to be concerned about the upcoming period of nestling growth and survival.

This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 45th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

This post was updated on August 4, 2019.

Categories
Arctic Change

Documenting Arctic Change

Cooper Island has provided me with a place to conduct a long-term study of an Arctic seabird and also a place where I have been fortunate to establish some long-term friendships. In June 2001, photographer Joe McNally visited the island to obtain images to accompany the New York Times story Darcy Frey was writing about the Cooper Island research. Joe’s week on the island in 2001 started with him being sick in his tent for the first two days but, after he and I had spent a week walking through the guillemot colony and chatting back at camp, ended with a friendship that has lasted 18 years.

Joe McNally and George Divoky on Cooper Island in 2019, 18 years after McNally’s first visit to the island to document Arctic change. Image Credit: Joe McNally

While Darcy’s story and Joe’s photos were scheduled to appear in the autumn of 2001, events in mid-September altered that scheduling, as the Times and the rest of the media focused on stories about 9/11 for the remainder of the year. To have 2002 begin with a break from events of the fall of 2001, the New York Times Magazine ran the Cooper Island story the first Sunday of the new year with Joe’s picture of me standing on sea ice as the cover photo.  

Over the past 18 years, whenever Joe and I have been able to meet, I told him I hoped he could return to Cooper Island someday to document how continuing warming has changed the Arctic since 2001. That all seemed like a pipe dream until recently when Joe arrived by boat from Utqiaġvik to spend a few days on the island to revisit the Black Guillemot colony and discuss my observations and thoughts about my 45 years of study.

Joe’s career in photography has taken him to many amazing places and his choosing to return to Cooper Island meant a great deal to me. This year’s visit came after almost four weeks alone on the island and the camaraderie of Joe and crew was an excellent way to end my solitude. Observing and documenting a melting Arctic can be disheartening but Joe’s desire to help me tell the Black Guillemot’s story – and the chance to renew our long-term friendship – raised my spirits as I approach the midpoint of this field season.

This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 45th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, please visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

Read More

George Divoky’s Planet by Darcy Frey

Arctic Sea Ice Blog

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Arctic Change

Early Season Optimism as Guillemots Diligently Attend Eggs

Field camp cabin in remote Arctic Cooper Island.
Mandt’s Black Guillemots roosting on roof of Cooper Island cabin, which was added to the field camp in 2003 when polar bear encounters were on the rise. Image Credit: Mike Morrison
Field camp cabin in remote Arctic Cooper Island.
Mandt’s Black Guillemots roosting on roof of Cooper Island cabin, which was added to the field camp in 2003 for additional protection from polar bears. Image Credit: Mike Morrison

Polar bears caused me to get a cabin on Cooper Island in 2003. After a rapid retreat of sea ice in August 2002, bears trashed our tents, which required making a hasty departure from the island with the help of a North Slope Borough Search and Rescue helicopter. The first week of the 2019 field season found me again living in a tent as I cleaned up after a polar bear was able to remove the board covering the cabin door and rearrange much of the gear and supplies I store on the island overwinter. Damage was not major but making my 8- by 12-foot summer home habitable took time.

Polar bears are frequent visitors on the island, requiring a range of protective measures from bear fences to a small cabin added in 2011. Video Credit: George Divoky

Luckily the first week’s tedium of camp housekeeping was balanced with daily indications that the Black Guillemot’s 2019 breeding season would not be a repeat of last year, when colony size and productivity had major decreases related to the poor survival and breeding condition of adults. Of the 75 nest sites occupied last year, only 25 had pairs that incubated eggs. This year a similar number of nests are occupied but all of those have birds diligently attending eggs.

The reasons for the difference in the two years is not yet clear. Both breeding seasons were preceded by a previously unprecedented lack of sea ice in the Bering Sea wintering area. Geolocation data loggers I am retrieving from some of the birds will allow comparison of the overwinter movements and distribution for the two years and may provide an answer.

Another indication of the health of the colony in 2019 is the number of first-time breeders. Long-term annual mortality of established breeders is approximately ten percent, and a stable population requires enough new recruits each year to occupy the vacancies. Unlike many recent years, this year saw a substantial number of previously nonbreeding local birds (individuals fledged from Cooper Island) and immigrants occupying those vacancies and even pairing up with each other to breed in sites not occupied last summer – something that has been rare in the period of colony decline in recent decades.

Another major highlight of the first week of censusing was the sighting of a bird fledged in 2017, a year when the colony experienced large-scale nestling mortality. The season was documented by Hannah Waters in Audubon magazine. The two-year old bird sighted this year was raised in the nest featured in the Audubon cover image by Peter Mather; it shows a female parent about to enter a nest with a sculpin. The story emphasized how the colony’s survival in a melting Arctic would require a few individuals to be able to provision young from ice-free waters and for those young to return to breed. While the 2017 offspring sighted this year is not breeding, few birds breed earlier than three years of age, its return to Cooper combined with the other positive signs of colony health in 2019, provide reasons for some early season optimism.

This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 45th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, please visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

Read More

Making Camp in the Arctic by George Divoky

Birders Don’t Need to Be Told That Catastrophic Climate Change Approaches by Hannah Waters

Disappearing Ice Means New Ways of Life for Arctic Birds by Hannah Waters