Sooty Shearwaters in the California Current: 2008

A project of Pacific Procellariid Research Consortium in conjunction with the partners and sponsors detailed below.

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Introduction

Shown here are 27 tracks from Sooty Shearwaters (Puffinus griseus) that were outfitted in June-July 2008 with small satellite transmitters at 3 sites within the California Current System (CCS): the Columbia River Plume, WA/OR, Monterey Bay, CA, and the Santa Barbara Channel, CA.

Sooty shearwaters are an ideal indicator species for the California Current System for several reasons. First, with an estimated population numbering approximately 20 million individuals, they are one of Earth’s most numerous seabirds and dominate the CCS marine avifauna. Second, shearwaters respond rapidly to changing environmental conditions that affect spatial patterns in prey availability (i.e., upwelling and relaxation events and frontal boundaries). Third, they can dive to 60-m depth and therefore they sample a thick layer of the upper ocean. Fourth, their movements within the CCS can be tracked and are not constrained (as with locally breeding species) by the need to return at regular intervals to a breeding colony. Lastly, during the non-breeding season when they inhabit the CCS, individual movements are representative of thousands of individuals as birds travel and feed en masse—single flocks can extend for many square kilometers and often number greater than 100,000s of individuals.

Our previous studies indicate that shearwaters likely disperse in search of profitable foraging grounds once local feeding conditions deteriorate. Because shearwaters have the capacity for rapid and extensive redistribution to areas with high prey availability, beyond the temporal and spatial scales of ship-based surveys, shearwater movements can be used to integrate spatial and temporal information about the abundance and distribution of forage species over very large spatial scales (i.e., virtually the entire CCS).

Project Partners

This project "Connectivity of West Coast National Marine Sanctuaries: Tracking Sooty Shearwaters Throughout the California Current", is funded by California Sea Grant. We acknowledge all those who are supporting this effort: Claremont Colleges, Duke University, Moss Landing Marine Labs, Oregon State University, NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center, California Department of Fish and Game Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center, US Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center, and Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge.