Birds on the Brain

rhamphotheca:

Above the ocean: saving the world’s most threatened birds

by Jeremy Hance

A life on the ocean is a perilous one for any bird. They must expend energy staying aloft for thousands of miles and learn to be marathon swimmers; they must seek food beneath treacherous waves and brave the world’s most extreme climates; they must navigate the perils both of an unforgiving sea and far-flung islands.

Yet seabirds, which includes 346 global species that depend on marine ecosystems, have evolved numerous strategies and complex life histories to deal with the challenges of the sea successfully, and they have been doing so since the dinosaur’s last stand. Today, despite such a track record, no other bird family is more threatened; yet it’s not the wild, unpredictable sea that endangers them, but pervasive human impacts.

“They are exquisitely beautiful, they are extreme athletes, and their travels and migratory skills inspire awe,” Carl Safina, author of Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival and founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute, says of seabirds. Starting his career by researching seabirds, Safina says many of these beautiful athletes “are in trouble.”

In fact, a recent paper in Bird Conservation International found that the 28 percent of the world’s seabirds are listed as threatened by the IUCN Red List—over double the percentage of birds imperiled as a whole, 12 percent. Perhaps even more worrying, nearly half (46 percent) of sea birds are currently in decline…

(Read more: Monga Bay)

(imagesby Carl Safina: T -Southern Giant Petrels; BL - Salvin’s Albatross; BM - Magenta Petrel; BR - Gray-headed Albatross)