Seeing more dead birds in La Jolla? You’re not alone. An expert explains why the warm ocean water is leading to seabird mortality.
If you’ve walked the La Jolla coastline lately, you may have noticed an increase in dead seabirds and it’s not your imagination: There is an uptick and a local seabird expert says the recent warmer ocean temperatures are to blame.
After lajolla.ca and its readers and followers observed, shared photos and sent messages of numerous Brandt’s cormorants, California brown pelicans and Western gulls found lying on the bluffs or near the shoreline the last several weeks, we reached out to Scripps Institution of Oceanography to learn what scientists have noticed.
“It’s a lot of madness,” Tammy Russell, PhD, postdoctoral researcher at SIO and the volunteer coordinator for a US Fish and Wildlife program called Beachcombers, said, adding her network of West Coast seabird researchers has been communicating with each other and comparing notes with concern.
Russell’s information, collected from Beachcomber surveys along the California coast from the Mexican border to the central coast and UC San Diego student surveys from La Jolla Cove and other sources, shows an uptick in dead seabirds along the coastline, washing up or landing on the shoreline to die.
The dead birds are tested by SeaWorld San Diego rescue staff, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and other organizations for avian flu and other diseases, but nearly all the tests are coming back negative, Russell, who also works with the nonprofit Pelican Science to track local pelicans, said.
The seabirds are starving.
Image courtesy of Flo Li, @flowing_zen_nature
“What we’re seeing in the ocean right now is warmer temperatures in the whole southern region off of California,” she said, “and these are suppressing upwelling [the movement of deep, cold, nutrient-rich water towards the surface], … and we’re getting this lower productivity … impacting the birds.”
Most of the birds “coming in for rehab are emaciated,” Russell said, deprived of prey.
“If these seabirds are having this lack of resources, they have to expend more energy searching for food,” she said, further exacerbating the number of deaths.
Exact numbers and statistics aren’t yet available; further testing and research over the rest of the year will provide clarity about the extent of this seabird mortality event, Russell said, noting the problem isn’t local to La Jolla and San Diego but appearing region-wide.
The information so far, however, is “alarming,” Russell said, as these kinds of mortality events are becoming “more common and more severe with these marine heat waves.”
Marine “blobs” of warm water in 2014 and 2015, also blamed for kelp forest die-offs, killed millions of seabirds, Russell said.
The current observations are leading scientists to “perk up,” she added, “because we don’t know how bad it’s going to get. … It’s encouraged all of us to work together and share data regionally so we can better understand what’s going on and document how these events have been increasing.”
If you spot a bird dead or in distress, call SeaWorld Rescue (800) 541-7325; Project Wildlife (619) 299-7012; or report to nonprofit Wildlife Jewels.
