Common murres look like skinny penguins but fly like F-15 fighter jets.
The North Pacific seabirds can quickly cover hundreds of miles searching for schools of small forage fish. Their powerful wings let them dive more than 150 feet (46 meters) under water to gorge on capelin, sand lance, herring, sardine and juvenile pollock.
So biologists were stunned four winters ago when carcasses of emaciated common murres showed up on beaches in what they say was the largest seabird die-off recorded in the world’s oceans. The die-off eventually killed an estimated 500,000 to 1 million murres from California to Alaska, eliminating 10-20% of the northeast Pacific population of the species. Seabird experts now believe they know why.
Common murres were ambushed by effects of the northeast Pacific marine heatwave dubbed “The Blob,” according to a paper published Wednesday by 23 federal, university and private researchers in the science journal PLOS ONE. The heatwave lasted more than 700 days from 2014 to 2016, increasing water temperature and interrupting patterns in the food web from the smallest creatures to top predators.
Forage fish — the main prey of murres— feed on zooplankton, the floating small animals that feed on plant plankton. Cold water produces the biggest, fattiest varieties of zooplankton. But the marine heatwave reduced the nutritional value of zooplankton, researchers concluded, and the lower-grade food stunted the growth of forage fish.
In turn, warmer water increased the metabolism of large fish such as Pacific cod, walleye pollock and arrowtooth flounder, requiring them to eat more forage fish.
That translated into a double whammy for murres, according to the researchers. The seabirds found that their main food source had a fraction of its usual nutrition. Murres also found themselves out-competed by large fish.
“The food just wasn’t there and everybody wanted it,” said lead author John Piatt, a research biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey who has studied seabird for more than 40 years. “And it just got scarcer and scarcer.”
Common murres have marvelous tools for finding forage fish but have an Achille’s heel: Murres must eat 56% of their body mass every day, the equivalent of 60 to 120 finger-length forage fish. If they don’t, they can starve in three to five days, Piatt said.
Murre die-offs have occurred before but never in such numbers and never across three ecosystems, Piatt said, alluding to the California Current System, the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. Biologists with help from citizen scientists counted or collected 62,000 carcasses, although Piatt says the figure represents only a fraction of the deaths because murres spend most of their time far from shore.
About two-thirds of the dead birds were adults — and that carried ramifications for reproduction. Thirteen murre colonies in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, where thousands of murres gather to reproduce, experienced complete failures for at least one breeding season during or after the die-off.
Seabird experts early on suspected naturally occurring toxins played a role in the deaths. So far, there has been no evidence that anything other than starvation could explain the mass mortality, Piatt said.
Pulling together work done by oceanographers, fishery and avian disease experts and data collected by citizen scientists, Piatt and his collaborators focused on effects of the marine heat wave.
The Blob created water with surface temperatures that were more than 4 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) above normal. The heat wave extended hundreds of miles (kilometers) off shore and hundreds of feet (meters) below the surface.
The reasons for the heatwave are unclear. Global warming has slowly raised ocean temperatures over decades. Yet the marine heatwave also is tied to the recurring Pacific climate patterns including El Nino cycles of warm sea surface temperatures and changing patterns of wind speed, direction and duration that help mix ocean waters.
The murre deaths signaled that something was wrong in the ocean but starvation, die-offs, reproduction failures or population declines were recorded in other species: cod, arrowtooth flounder, rhinoceros auklets, tufted puffins, California sea lions and Guadalupe fur seals. Seventy-nine humpback and fin whales stranded during 2015-16, mostly for “unexplained” reasons and in the Gulf of Alaska. The common thread was their reliance on forage fish.
“It sort of hit me — no wonder things were so screwed up, no wonder this thing hit so hard, because the four-inch species is at the heart of all this for the murres, the rhinos, the tufteds the humpbacks,” Piatt said.
Fisheries professor Selina Heppell, the chair of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University, said it’s long been known or suspected that there were big impacts from the marine heatwave.
“What this group has been able to do is actually pull several lines of evidence together into a cohesive story,” said Heppell, who was not part of the study.
However, she said the study underscores the need for additional research on forage fish even though many do not have commercial value. “That’s what you really have to get to do to answer these ecosystem-change kinds of questions.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
