CONSERV ATION
Sea Birds& A
s the nesting season came to an end, many climbing areas were noted to open early either due to birds already fledging or no birds at all. For those wishing for a few more weeks on their climbing projects this may have come as welcome news, but the stark reality of it is that the impact of a changing climate on our ocean and sea bird populations is having a drastic affect. This article will not be able to cover every aspect and the tides that move our planet are too complicated to be detailed in a short article, it’s also not this author's speciality, but we will look into the shallows of what is affecting our sea bird populations. Different species of birds are being affected in different
ways, this can be due to the ranges of the species (how far an individual can cover), their foraging behaviours; do they hunt near the surface or dive like Guillemots, and also the range of diet. Species that rely solely on one species of fish will be affected greater by the change in the size of that population. In the UK around 20 species have been identified that the marine habitat is their primary foraging resource. Evidence suggest that 11 of these are negatively affected by climate change and 14 of them are regarded at being at high or medium risk to the effects of climate change.
Climate Change Understanding the impact of Climate Change on Sea Bird Populations FOOD AND FORAGING
Changes in food sources are having a big impact during the breeding season, many birds rely on sand eel populations to feed their young before they fledge and there is a limited distance many birds can travel to forage for their food. Sand eels are important as they bridge the food chain gap between plankton and predatory fish and seabirds. The changes in oceanic temperatures are influencing the spawning times of sand eel eggs, which can delay hatch times meaning that they don’t coincide with sea bird nesting times.
READ MORE:
Sandeels and their availability as seabird prey
Other species such as herring and capelin are migrating to cooler waters making it harder for birds to forage particularly during the critical breeding and nesting seasons. This is leading to lower reproductive rates, and ultimately a decline in population. To complicate matters further, excess dissolved carbon dioxide
is leading to ocean acidification, this is also having a negative affect on oceans food chains, phytoplankton and zooplankton have shells that cannot form or dissolve in an acidic ocean, and when plankton declines this has an affect on everything above them in the food chain, including our sea bird colonies.
SUMMIT#111 | AUTUMN 2023 | 51
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