WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en-US 00:00:04.020 --> 00:00:04.560 Welcome, everyone. 00:00:05.460 --> 00:00:09.660 We're pleased to have you join  us for the view from Destruction,   00:00:09.660 --> 00:00:12.960 one Island, Twelve Thousands Birds or so, and the Futures.   00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:19.920 using the Office of National Marine Sanctuary's  Webinar Series platform. I'd like to start with   00:00:19.920 --> 00:00:25.560 an acknowledgement that we are broadcasting from  the traditional lands of the Lower Elwha Klallam 00:00:25.560 --> 00:00:30.600 tribe and near the site of their historical  village to č̕ixʷícən (Tse-whit-zen), the   00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:33.120 Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe as a sovereign federally   00:00:33.120 --> 00:00:36.240 recognized Indian Nation with its  own constitution and government. 00:00:37.080 --> 00:00:42.660 The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe resides in the  Lower Elwha River Valley and Adjacent Bluffs   00:00:42.660 --> 00:00:47.520 on the North Coast of the Olympic Peninsula  and just west of Port Angeles, Washington.   00:00:48.540 --> 00:00:52.680 This tribe has lived in this area  since time immemorial. And today,   00:00:52.680 --> 00:00:57.900 tribal lands include about one thousand acres of  land on or near the river, where they continue   00:00:57.900 --> 00:01:05.100 to be active in stewardship, that excuse me,  protects, enhances and restores land, air,   00:01:05.100 --> 00:01:09.660 and water resources and environmental  health for generations to come. And   00:01:09.660 --> 00:01:13.740 I hope you'll join me in supporting their  efforts and successes to meet these goals. 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:20.340 So my name is Chris Butler Minor. And I'm  the Community Engagement Specialist for   00:01:20.340 --> 00:01:24.780 Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.  And I'll be facilitating today's webinar. 00:01:25.380 --> 00:01:31.800 Then also joining us is Grant Gollehon, that I  may have said that correctly or may not have,   00:01:31.800 --> 00:01:38.700 so, sorry if I did not, who is the  Education and Outreach Assistant. He's   00:01:38.700 --> 00:01:42.960 a Washington Conservation Corps member  serving at Feiro Marine Life Center.   00:01:44.340 --> 00:01:49.560 This event is co-hosted by Olympic Coast  National Marine Sanctuary and Feiro Marine   00:01:49.560 --> 00:01:55.320 Life Center as the third installment of  our 2023 speaker series and the speaker   00:01:55.320 --> 00:02:01.860 series is designed to bring you marine focused  topics of interest from subject matter experts. 00:02:02.520 --> 00:02:08.160 During the presentation, all attendees  will be in listen only mode, and we'll   00:02:08.160 --> 00:02:14.160 have time to answer questions at the end of  the presentation. But you're welcome to type   00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:18.420 your questions into the question box, which  is on the right hand side of your screen,   00:02:19.140 --> 00:02:24.060 and you can also use the question box to let  us know if you're having any technical issues. 00:02:24.660 --> 00:02:31.200 We'll be monitoring those incoming questions,  and we'll respond to them as quickly as we can. 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:34.500 Just as a reminder, we are recording this session,   00:02:34.500 --> 00:02:41.100 and we'll share the recording with registered  participants via email, And it will also be   00:02:41.100 --> 00:02:45.840 posted on the Office of National Sanctuaries  Website, along with closed captioning. 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:51.300 Also, after the session, we'll greatly  appreciate any feedback that you might   00:02:51.300 --> 00:02:54.420 have for us that will help us  improve the experience. So please   00:02:54.420 --> 00:02:58.980 take a few moments to complete a short  evaluation following the presentation. 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:06.240 So I'd like to begin with a brief introduction  to the National Marine Sanctuary System,   00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:11.580 if you're not familiar with it.  It is, over 50 years ago the US. 00:03:11.580 --> 00:03:16.860 ushered in a new era of ocean conservation,  excuse me, by creating the National Marine   00:03:16.860 --> 00:03:22.680 Sanctuary System. And NOAA's Office of National  Sanctuary serves as the trustee for a network of   00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:29.280 underwater areas, encompassing more than 620,000  square miles of marine and Great Lake waters.   00:03:29.940 --> 00:03:37.920 And as you can see from the map, excuse me,  sanctuary is located all around US shorelines and   00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:47.580 coasts. From Stellwagen Bank in Massachusetts down  to American Samoa way down south in the Pacific. 00:03:48.480 --> 00:03:58.080 And the sanctuary that I work for, Olympic coast,  is located along the coast of Washington State,   00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:02.100 and is within the usual and accustomed  fishing and hunting areas of the 00:04:02.100 --> 00:04:06.240 Hoh Tribe, Makah Tribe, Quileute Tribe,  and the Quinault Indian Nation.   00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:11.880 And this webinar series, sponsored by  the National Marine Sanctuary System,   00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:16.800 provides formal and informal educators  with educational and scientific expertise,   00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:20.100 resources, and training to  help support ocean literacy. 00:04:21.960 --> 00:04:26.100 Then I just want to give some specific information  about Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. 00:04:26.100 --> 00:04:32.040 As I mentioned, it's located off the outer coast  of Washington state and stretching from the north,   00:04:32.040 --> 00:04:39.540 just west of Neah Bay, southward, all the  way to the mouth of the Copalis River. 00:04:39.540 --> 00:04:46.920 The sanctuary boundaries go out from the  shoreline westward, about 45 miles in  00:04:46.920 --> 00:04:53.580 the north and then, come in to about 25 miles off  the coastline and follows the continental shelf,  00:04:53.580 --> 00:05:04.320 southward. And most of the sanctuary waters are  covering or depths of 200 meters or less, but  00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:10.020 some of the deep Submarine Canyons can be  more than 1500 meters or about 5000 feet deep. 00:05:10.620 --> 00:05:16.500 And the sanctuary covers an area that's more  than twice the size of Olympic National Park, and  00:05:16.500 --> 00:05:19.680 it's approximately 1.7 times  larger than Puget Sound. 00:05:19.680 --> 00:05:22.200 It was established in 1994. 00:05:23.640 --> 00:05:29.520 Because it's home to one of North America's most  productive marine ecoregions, It protects an  00:05:29.520 --> 00:05:36.420 upwelling zone. That is, seasonal hosts are home  to marine mammals and seabirds. Lots of them. 00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:41.700 And along its shores are thriving  kelp and intertidal communities,   00:05:42.780 --> 00:05:44.040 deep sea and there are deep  00:05:44.040 --> 00:05:49.920 sea corals that are scattered on the deep sea  floor. And sponges that form habitat for fishes 00:05:49.920 --> 00:05:56.100 and other important marine wildlife, and also  because of the significant natural and cultural  00:05:56.100 --> 00:06:02.280 resources found along this spectacular, largely  undeveloped coast coastline which represent some  00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:05.460 of the last remaining wilderness  coastline in the lower 48 states. 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:14.060 So now I'd like to turn the mic over to Grant  and let him introduce Feiro Marine Life Center. 00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:17.820 [Grant] Hi there. Thank you, Chris, for that,   00:06:17.820 --> 00:06:20.220 and thank you everybody, for joining us tonight. 00:06:20.220 --> 00:06:25.800 I'm Grant Gollehon. I'm the Education and  Outreach Assistant at Feiro Marine Life Center. 00:06:25.800 --> 00:06:31.440 We are a non-profit community aquarium  located in Port Angeles, Washington. 00:06:31.440 --> 00:06:36.060 In 1981 were founded by a  community leader and educator, 00:06:36.060 --> 00:06:40.980 Arthur Feiro. Our Mission at Feiro is to  connect the community and the environment by  00:06:40.980 --> 00:06:45.780 providing local, marine and watershed learning  experiences and increasing the awareness of how  00:06:45.780 --> 00:06:47.760 closely connected and interdependent we are. 00:06:47.760 --> 00:06:52.740 Would you like me to introduce our  special guest tonight, Chris? Perfect. 00:06:53.640 --> 00:06:56.760 So it's my pleasure to introduce  you guys to Eric Wagner. 00:06:56.760 --> 00:07:03.900 Eric Wagner, is a researcher at the Center  for Ecosystem's Sentinels at the University of  00:07:03.900 --> 00:07:06.900 Washington, where he also  completed his PHD in Biology. 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:15.960 He studies Magellanic penguins at their colony  at Punta Tombo, Argentina and closer to home  00:07:15.960 --> 00:07:21.660 rhinoceros auklet colonies in Washington. In  addition to his research, he writes about science,  00:07:21.660 --> 00:07:24.540 animals, and the environment. His essays and 00:07:25.440 --> 00:07:30.780 journalism has appeared in the  Atlantic, Audubon, Orion and The   00:07:30.780 --> 00:07:34.620 High Country News, ecology recovery of I'm sorry. 00:07:34.620 --> 00:07:39.300 High Country News and is also the author of  three books including the most recent After the  00:07:39.300 --> 00:07:43.980 Blast: The Ecology of Recovery of Mount Saint  Helens. He currently lives in, Seattle is his  00:07:43.980 --> 00:07:47.940 family. So without further ado  I'd like to introduce Eric Wagner. 00:07:47.940 --> 00:07:51.780 [Eric] Hi everyone. Thanks Grant  for that introduction and thanks. 00:07:51.780 --> 00:07:54.240 Thank you all for having  me. This is really exciting.  00:07:55.440 --> 00:08:02.940 Great. OK, so yeah, Tonight, I'm going to talk.  The title for my talk was, originally, as sort of  00:08:02.940 --> 00:08:08.760 alluded to the View from Destruction, One Island,  12,000 birds or so, and the Futures of the North  00:08:08.760 --> 00:08:11.940 Pacific. But I realized as I was sort  of putting it together, that, that   00:08:11.940 --> 00:08:15.180 wasn't quite accurate. So I'm doing a bit of a bait and   00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:19.080 switch. So instead of the View from  Destruction, it is actually A Tale of  00:08:19.080 --> 00:08:24.540 Two Islands. The Lives and Times of Rhinoceros  Auklets in the California Current and the Salish  00:08:24.540 --> 00:08:27.420 Sea. So I hope you'll forgive  me for this, but really,   00:08:27.420 --> 00:08:32.460 you could think of it as kind of two islands for the price of one, and way, way more auklets. 00:08:33.780 --> 00:08:34.560 So, there's that. 00:08:35.340 --> 00:08:43.320 I also want to give a thank you and talk about  basically, also say that I've worked with several  00:08:43.320 --> 00:08:48.000 other folks. I think one of whom you just  heard from, Scott Person with the Washington  00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:54.060 Department of Fish and Wildlife, Tom Good at  NOAA, and Peter Hodum them at the University  00:08:54.060 --> 00:08:57.720 of Puget Sound. And they've actually been working  at these places a lot longer than I have, and  00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:00.900 so none of us, I mean, none of the  things that I'm going to talk about   00:09:00.900 --> 00:09:04.020 are mine alone. I just want to make that very, very clear. 00:09:05.760 --> 00:09:10.080 So what am I going to talk about? Tonight I'm going to talk about two things.   00:09:10.740 --> 00:09:15.240 This sort of has, its a two part-er, a two part story, The first part is   00:09:15.240 --> 00:09:19.260 going to be on the blob, or an unexpected tale of climate resilience. 00:09:21.540 --> 00:09:26.400 The second thing I'm going to talk to you about  is the unusual mortality event or a postmodern  00:09:26.400 --> 00:09:31.500 climate mystery, and all of this sort  of stems from long term monitoring   00:09:31.500 --> 00:09:33.660 work that has been going on at both of these islands. 00:09:34.800 --> 00:09:38.340 So let's get started on the  blob, or an Unexpected Tail   00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:44.160 of Climate Resilience. So perhaps you remember the blob. This is an image,   00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:49.260 a NOAA image actually from sea surface temperature anomalies. 00:09:49.260 --> 00:09:56.580 The blob that lasted, it was this huge, massive,  unusually warm water that formed off the, in the,  00:09:56.580 --> 00:10:03.540 in the northeast Pacific in 2014. And it  lasted for three years: 2014 through 2016. 00:10:04.500 --> 00:10:07.140 Was the longest   00:10:07.860 --> 00:10:12.300 three years, the highest temperatures, over  a three year period in sort of recorded  00:10:12.300 --> 00:10:18.300 memory. And in 2015, as you can see  here, it was so, basically, this is huge, 00:10:18.300 --> 00:10:25.140 you know, this big patch of warm water formed  at the surface and it just kinda stayed there  00:10:26.340 --> 00:10:31.200 throughout the year it just didn't dissipate as  people were expecting or as typically happens. 00:10:32.100 --> 00:10:37.920 And so, to give you a sense of kind of how  the blob works, this is a table of marine  00:10:37.920 --> 00:10:38.520 heatwaves. 00:10:38.520 --> 00:10:42.840 The blog was a, it's sort of name in sciences,   00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:47.160 the north-east Pacific Marine Heatwaves. And Marine Heatwaves are becoming quite a thing. 00:10:48.420 --> 00:10:55.020 As you know, they happen all over the world.  You can see on this table from a paper that, you  00:10:55.020 --> 00:10:57.600 know, there are some in the Mediterranean  Sea. They've been going on since  00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:05.100 1999. There are some big, famous ones down in  Australia, around Australia, Tasman Sea and the  00:11:05.100 --> 00:11:11.820 Great Barrier Reef, off of California. And you  can see that there are levels of categories of  00:11:11.820 --> 00:11:15.780 heatwaves, so, you know, moderate  to strong, severe to extreme. 00:11:15.780 --> 00:11:18.720 And so the blob was a category three,   00:11:20.940 --> 00:11:24.060 severe marine heat wave. And if you look at this table,   00:11:24.060 --> 00:11:28.140 you can look at just sort of different  characteristics of it, like its  00:11:28.140 --> 00:11:35.520 duration. It was really, really long. It was 711  days. And then it shows different amounts of time  00:11:35.520 --> 00:11:38.700 that it spent in different states.  So for some time it was moderate,   00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:41.820 for some time it was strong, for some time it was severe. 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:47.460 And that's kind of an important point about  marine heatwaves is that they are classed or  00:11:47.460 --> 00:11:50.460 categorized by their highest state. 00:11:50.460 --> 00:11:58.500 So, even though the blob was mostly in the  moderate to severe or to strong phases because it  00:11:58.500 --> 00:12:01.260 spent some time in the severe  phase, as you can see here,   00:12:02.340 --> 00:12:09.060 you can see kind of down there in the lower right, In the kind of peaks and valleys. It   00:12:09.060 --> 00:12:13.320 was in the winter, actually, when it was hottest when it was most anomalously warm. 00:12:14.040 --> 00:12:21.660 And so, these are sort of interesting points of  blob mechanics or heat wave mechanics. As you  00:12:21.660 --> 00:12:23.700 know, these are really sort  of diverse phenomena and   00:12:23.700 --> 00:12:30.000 people are still, are still figuring out how to describe them, how to figure out how their effects   00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:33.900 kind of ripple through food webs and marine systems. 00:12:35.940 --> 00:12:44.340 But, the blob's effects are super pronounced in  a lot of different ways. So, one of them is there  00:12:44.340 --> 00:12:50.880 was a huge common murre die off in  the Gulf of Alaska that starved , I 00:12:50.880 --> 00:12:55.740 think it was 2015, 2016, just tens of thousands  of murre’s starved after they finished  00:12:55.740 --> 00:13:03.480 breeding. And they found, I think they were, they  counted over 60,000. I believe 62,000 that had  00:13:03.480 --> 00:13:06.540 washed ashore along the Alaskan  coastline. And from this,   00:13:06.540 --> 00:13:09.240 they inferred that hundreds of thousands of murre’s had died. 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:16.740 So, another blob sort of, event, was this,  because our little Cassin's auklet lined   00:13:16.740 --> 00:13:17.280 up on the beach.   00:13:18.300 --> 00:13:25.680 And in 2014 and 2015, there was a massive Cassin's  auklet die off, off the north coast, or the  00:13:25.680 --> 00:13:32.460 west coast of North America. And it was estimated  that about 10% of the global population, I  00:13:32.460 --> 00:13:34.860 think, of Cassin's auklets died  off with this single event. 00:13:37.260 --> 00:13:40.140 And it was not just birds that  were affected by the blob, either. 00:13:40.140 --> 00:13:47.760 In 20 15 and 2016, there was an unusual mortality  event of gray whales that, there's actually kind  00:13:47.760 --> 00:13:53.820 of one ongoing. You’ve probably heard about  how many Gray Whales, dead Gray whales began  00:13:53.820 --> 00:13:57.000 to wash ashore at beaches all up  and down Oregon and Washington,   00:13:58.020 --> 00:14:03.120 in British Columbia, Canada and Alaska, and also down sometimes in Mexico. 00:14:04.020 --> 00:14:09.000 This particular whale here was one that washed  ashore on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. 00:14:11.100 --> 00:14:18.060 And so the Blob ended officially, in 2016, it was  after, that, that marine conditions began to go  00:14:18.060 --> 00:14:25.920 back to normal, but its effects persisted. This  is a graph from a paper that, as you can see, was  00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:28.740 that ecosystem response persists after prolonged   00:14:28.740 --> 00:14:32.460 Marine Heatwaves, and the marine heatwave that this paper was about was the blob. 00:14:33.180 --> 00:14:39.420 And these metrics that they're looking at, you  can see, you know, range from forage fish, birds  00:14:39.420 --> 00:14:44.760 and mammals. Birds at sea along the shoreline,  groundfish and Commercial harvest. And you can  00:14:44.760 --> 00:14:50.040 see here the sort of gray patch through each one  of those graphs is it's sort of a blob years. 00:14:50.760 --> 00:14:55.800 And you see this flip, you know, of some things  that were high that suddenly become low, some  00:14:55.800 --> 00:15:01.200 things that were low that suddenly become high  and they stay that way. You know, you can tell  00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:07.200 by the end of the graphs that these figures in  2018 that things are may be starting to kind of  00:15:07.200 --> 00:15:11.820 creep back to what they had been before. But the  point is that, you know, once you get this huge  00:15:11.820 --> 00:15:15.540 shock to an ecosystem, it  doesn't just sort of go away.   00:15:15.540 --> 00:15:20.160 It doesn't like you're turning on a switch or turning off a switch. It's more like you dial it   00:15:20.160 --> 00:15:27.060 up. And then you slowly dial it back maybe, maybe you don't, maybe some of these, these effects that   00:15:27.060 --> 00:15:28.860 come from marine heatwaves are very persistent. 00:15:30.180 --> 00:15:36.060 But there was one particular species rather near  and dear to our hearts, to my heart and the hearts  00:15:36.060 --> 00:15:39.480 of my colleagues, that we wanted to  look at and how it responded blob,   00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:41.580 and that was the Rhinoceros auklet. 00:15:41.580 --> 00:15:45.720 This is a picture of a Rhinoceros auklet. It's a   00:15:45.720 --> 00:15:49.740 large, it's alcid a or an auk,  a close relative of a puffin,  00:15:49.740 --> 00:15:53.940 which I think of it, the Tufted puffins,  which I think you just met, perhaps,   00:15:53.940 --> 00:15:57.300 at your last seminar. It is a bit, you know,   00:15:57.300 --> 00:16:00.720 I think it's just as fascinating, but you  can see it's a little bit more of a study  00:16:00.720 --> 00:16:09.000 of grays and curious features: the tufts around  or the brows and mutton chop whiskers. It grows a  00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.000 little horn during the breeding  season. That falls off when it's done. 00:16:12.780 --> 00:16:16.200 And the auklet, the neat thing  about the auklet is that there's   00:16:16.200 --> 00:16:18.600 a really good size breeding population in Washington. 00:16:19.980 --> 00:16:23.760 And often, I mean you can see it around not  just in the summer, but sometimes if you live in  00:16:23.760 --> 00:16:28.380 Puget Sound, if you look, or if you happen to be  riding the ferry, like in Seattle, I sometimes see  00:16:28.380 --> 00:16:33.180 them at Discovery Park, just kinda hanging out  a little bit off shore up the point there.   00:16:34.800 --> 00:16:40.920 So there are two colonies that we have been  looking at for many years since the early two  00:16:41.460 --> 00:16:45.360 thousands. One is Destruction Island, which I  believe is probably within your National Marine  00:16:45.360 --> 00:16:51.900 Sanctuary. And the other is Protection Island,  which is in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 00:16:52.860 --> 00:16:57.000 The neat thing about these two islands is that,  even though they're very close to each other,  00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:04.080 they're subject to distinct, sort of, marine,  physical, what we would say, physical forcing 00:17:04.080 --> 00:17:09.060 mechanism. Where Destruction Island, being on  the outer coast is much more - it sits within  00:17:09.060 --> 00:17:11.340 this California Current, large marine ecosystem.   00:17:13.080 --> 00:17:19.740 And Protection Island in the Strait of Juan de  Fuca is more sort of Salish Sea, ocean graphically  00:17:19.740 --> 00:17:24.660 influenced, I guess you could say, although, I  mean, obviously, that the California Current has a  00:17:24.660 --> 00:17:27.240 strong influence on what  happens in the Salish Sea. 00:17:28.680 --> 00:17:33.960 Now I want to kind of give you a quick tour  of the islands that we work out from a human  00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:34.500 perspective. 00:17:35.400 --> 00:17:37.440 Well a human and an auklet. 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:42.960 So this is a view of Destruction Island  on an uncharacteristically clear,   00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:46.860 summer day. Destruction a few miles off the coast.   00:17:47.640 --> 00:17:50.880 To be there you sort of feel this  pleasing sense of remoteness. You  00:17:50.880 --> 00:17:55.440 know the only way to get there is to take a boat  from La Push. It's about an hour, it's about 17  00:17:55.440 --> 00:18:01.320 miles south of La Push. It's an old Coast  Guard station or, you know, that's why it has a  00:18:01.320 --> 00:18:04.680 lighthouse, but it has a  long history among the Coast 00:18:04.680 --> 00:18:11.820 Salish peoples, Quinault it's sort of within old  Quinault territory. Present actually Quinault  00:18:11.820 --> 00:18:18.780 territorial waters and Quinaults and Quileutes would  use it as a place to hunt seals. Sometimes they  00:18:18.780 --> 00:18:21.060 would hunt whales and they would even  hunt auklets from time to time.   00:18:22.380 --> 00:18:28.380 And the auklets show up at Destruction in April,  they start to kind of prospect, and they lay a  00:18:28.380 --> 00:18:32.880 single egg in early May. And so you may  be looking at this, and you think, well,   00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:33.720 where are the auklets? 00:18:34.680 --> 00:18:41.520 And so the place to find an auklet is in the  trees. Those are some willows, growing up,   00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:42.540 the sandy bluffs. 00:18:43.740 --> 00:18:50.040 This is what it looks like if you actually dare to  go into those, those tree choked areas. It's quite  00:18:50.040 --> 00:18:53.700 thick. It's you know, it's  not easy to move around in.   00:18:53.700 --> 00:18:57.780 The ground is pretty loose. The soils are pretty loose and you kind of scrambling   00:18:57.780 --> 00:19:01.020 everywhere. And the auklets  what they do is they nest in  00:19:01.020 --> 00:19:06.060 these burrows. And so here's one here, here's  one here that you can kind of see. There might be  00:19:06.060 --> 00:19:11.340 one under there, and over here, and this, on the  right side, you can see there's one kind of tucked  00:19:11.340 --> 00:19:15.420 in there. There's one over there, one here and one up here   00:19:15.420 --> 00:19:21.000 just out of frame. So, the auklets you know at the, they are furtive creatures. They are,   00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:25.200 you don't really see them much  during the day. But if you  00:19:25.200 --> 00:19:30.780 go on to Destruction, you can kind of see the  evidence of them, you can see where they might be. 00:19:31.680 --> 00:19:36.360 And this is Protection. Protection is a lot  bigger than Destruction, and it has a lot more  00:19:36.360 --> 00:19:42.240 auklets. So Destruction has the latest, or the  most recent estimate, has them having about 6,500  00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:45.300 breeding pairs, so about 13,000 or so. 00:19:45.900 --> 00:19:54.120 Give or take, Protection has about 36,000 breeding  pairs, so over 70,000 auklets might be there  00:19:54.120 --> 00:19:58.740 during the breeding season. And the islands  themselves are quite different as habitat types. 00:20:02.100 --> 00:20:07.740 Excuse me. Protection is not as tree covered,  as Destruction is. And so you might ask, well,  00:20:07.740 --> 00:20:10.260 where the auklets, well here  the auklets are in the grass. 00:20:10.980 --> 00:20:16.980 If you were to walk over this, you would find  their burrow entrances sort of hidden in the grass  00:20:16.980 --> 00:20:21.240 and sometimes you can see the little trails that  they use when they're running around these little  00:20:21.240 --> 00:20:27.720 sort of, you know, auklet highways. And so, here's how we find out how the auklets   00:20:27.720 --> 00:20:31.320 are doing in any particular year. What we do is, so auklets 00:20:31.320 --> 00:20:34.680 you know, they spend the days at sea, and they  only come back to their colonies at night. 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:41.220 Although they will use, if they are incubating an  egg, they will be within their burrow during the  00:20:41.220 --> 00:20:44.460 day. And so, what we do is we  use these infrared cameras. 00:20:45.660 --> 00:20:50.820 On these sorts of burrow scopes, sort of like a  plumber does. You know, when they're, when they  00:20:50.820 --> 00:20:55.440 want to go through and see how your pipes are  doing. And so what this shows is Scott Pearson,   00:20:57.300 --> 00:21:02.820 on the left, on Destruction island in and amongst  the willows and on the right as Scott, and I  00:21:02.820 --> 00:21:05.640 think it's Peter Hodum, but it's hard  to tell because their heads are covered.   00:21:05.640 --> 00:21:10.560 Because the way it works is that you take the  burrow probe, you stick it into the burrow, you  00:21:10.560 --> 00:21:15.720 kinda work it in, and work around, the burrows are  often quite twisty, and so there's a lot of kind  00:21:15.720 --> 00:21:20.700 of maneuvering and cursing and muttering, and  getting very tired and dirty, and you have this  00:21:20.700 --> 00:21:25.560 this cover over your head, because on your face,  you're wearing this visor that lets you look at  00:21:25.560 --> 00:21:31.980 what the cameras feed is, what the camera sees.  And often, what the camera sees is just dirt.  00:21:32.760 --> 00:21:36.300 Then, you know, the lens will get  covered. You have to drag it out. 00:21:36.300 --> 00:21:43.140 You know, clean it off, stick it back in, then,  as you're working down these tunnels, you know,  00:21:43.140 --> 00:21:46.500 you're trying to interpret,  That's grass, that's a bug. 00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:49.560 That's a rock . It's really, really interesting,   00:21:49.560 --> 00:21:52.200 but eventually what often  happens is you get to the  00:21:52.200 --> 00:21:59.100 end of the tunnel, and this is what you see. So  it's one of those instances where science, you  00:21:59.100 --> 00:22:02.760 know, it's interpreting these images,  it can be as much art as science. 00:22:02.760 --> 00:22:08.100 So, you know, when you're twisting these cameras,  and you know they flip all the way over and  00:22:08.100 --> 00:22:10.980 so, the thing to know about this  image is that this way, this is up. 00:22:10.980 --> 00:22:17.400 So, the camera has come in on its side, if you  look at what you see, is this, eye shine. So that  00:22:17.400 --> 00:22:22.260 since it's an infrared camera, it's shining this  infrared light in the eye of the auklet will shine  00:22:22.260 --> 00:22:26.040 back. So, that's the eye that's  the beak. And what this is,   00:22:26.040 --> 00:22:28.560 is that's an outline of, basically, what the  00:22:28.560 --> 00:22:32.460 bird is, is that this is a chick,  so it's a chick that's in, its,   00:22:32.460 --> 00:22:36.000 actually, we would call it kind of a partially feather chick. It's still   00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:38.760 pretty downy, but it's starting to  get some feathers around its head. 00:22:41.220 --> 00:22:49.080 And, yeah, so the way, the auklet, the tunnels,  or the borrows are structured is, that the tunnel  00:22:49.080 --> 00:22:52.200 will go through, sometimes it'll fork. So, there might be chambers like this   00:22:52.200 --> 00:22:56.520 that are empty, or there'll be  dead-ends and things like that,  00:22:56.520 --> 00:22:59.340 that are super fun to try to, try to interpret.   00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:05.400 So we visit the islands three times a year for  auklet monitoring. And this is what we're looking  00:23:05.400 --> 00:23:09.900 for. This is a chick that is out in the open and  I should note that this is not our picture, we  00:23:09.900 --> 00:23:14.640 actually never see the chicks. We don't take them  out of their burrow, but some people who know  00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:21.300 the other teams in other places that do, might use  artificial nest boxes or that sometimes they can  00:23:21.300 --> 00:23:24.360 kind of dig into the burrows. And you pluck the  chick out and you weigh it and you put it back. 00:23:25.500 --> 00:23:31.800 This is a chick that's fairly far along. And you  can see, you know that it's, it's gray like its  00:23:31.800 --> 00:23:33.780 parents. It still has some down around its head   00:23:34.620 --> 00:23:37.980 and the other thing to notice  is the little nub of horn at the  00:23:37.980 --> 00:23:43.500 base of its bill that indicates, you know,  it's a kind of its namesake, what it will   00:23:43.500 --> 00:23:45.060 become as it gets older. 00:23:46.800 --> 00:23:51.600 So the other thing that we do is we look at what  auklets eat or while we're looking at how they  00:23:51.600 --> 00:23:55.200 breed, we're also looking at how  they're, how they're feeding their young.   00:23:55.980 --> 00:23:58.020 This is a picture of an auklet from Protection   00:23:58.020 --> 00:24:04.500 Island that has a bill load, or it has  its mouthful of small fish, forage fish  00:24:04.500 --> 00:24:09.560 called Sand Lance. And auklets, So they lay a single egg. A pair   00:24:09.560 --> 00:24:11.760 of auklets will lay a single egg.  So they only have one chick.   00:24:13.140 --> 00:24:17.700 Then what they do is they spend the day at sea,  foraging for that chick and also for themselves,  00:24:17.700 --> 00:24:21.600 and then at night, they come back under  cover of darkness. And they land there on the  00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:26.640 island. And then they scuttle over to their burrow  entrance and they sneak down into the burrow. 00:24:27.360 --> 00:24:31.380 And then, they drop all the food on the ground for  the chick, and then the chick can kind of eat at  00:24:31.380 --> 00:24:37.140 its pleasure. And so, as you can see from this  bill, I've probably heard about this with puffins,  00:24:37.140 --> 00:24:42.480 too, but auklets can hold a lot of fish in their  bills. They kind of hold them crosswise with their 00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:46.980 tongues, have little denticles that they  can use to kind of pin individual fish,   00:24:46.980 --> 00:24:48.900 so they can catch a lot of fish during the day. 00:24:48.900 --> 00:24:57.060 And then, sometimes you'll see them, they gather  kind of on the waters in front of the island, you  00:24:57.060 --> 00:25:01.680 know, at dusk and in the evening before it gets  really dark. They just kinda sit there and they  00:25:01.680 --> 00:25:05.940 have fish hanging out of their  bills. They look kind of funny. 00:25:08.340 --> 00:25:15.720 So, what do the auklets eat? What this shows is  that an auklet has a pretty varied diet. This is a  00:25:15.720 --> 00:25:22.500 way of showing that, so what, this is called,  this is a non-metric, multidimensional scaling  00:25:22.500 --> 00:25:26.760 graph. Which I realize there's a lot of words  that, you know, may not mean a ton to you, but the  00:25:26.760 --> 00:25:29.940 main point is to show that the  two islands are pretty distinct.  00:25:30.600 --> 00:25:36.900 Destruction is kinda the gray black one on the left end. And Protection is the blue   00:25:36.900 --> 00:25:40.980 one on the right. The particular points are, the black dots are the years. 00:25:40.980 --> 00:25:48.540 So, what this method shows is how in a, depending  on the year, auklets are more likely to eat a  00:25:48.540 --> 00:25:53.400 particular type of fish. So, all those letters  that you see, the light letters are fish species. 00:25:54.660 --> 00:26:01.680 And the main thing to know from this graph is  that never the twain shall meet the dietary  00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:04.500 practices of auklets on Destruction and Protection   00:26:04.500 --> 00:26:09.000 don't overlap at all, really. And so  this is really a reflection of the two  00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:11.580 systems, the different  systems, in which they live.   00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:16.440 You know, another, sort of, interesting feature  of the fact that, even though the two, the two  00:26:16.440 --> 00:26:18.420 colonies are quite close to each  other, you know, they're only  00:26:20.280 --> 00:26:23.340 80 miles apart, I think I said, roughly as the crow flies. 00:26:23.340 --> 00:26:28.740 You know, those are very different  worlds that the auklets are living in. 00:26:28.740 --> 00:26:34.500 But still, you know, even within those different  worlds, a few main species emerged the auklets  00:26:34.500 --> 00:26:39.360 prefer. And in the Destruction island,  their diet is a bit more diverse. 00:26:40.200 --> 00:26:45.360 The main species that we see them catch over  the years. This is a picture of Sand lance,   00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:48.480 and these are Pacific herring. 00:26:50.460 --> 00:26:56.400 These are anchovy, Northern anchovy. Then these are  smelt and they're usually a couple of types of  00:26:56.400 --> 00:26:59.820 smelt. That we see are White Bait smelt  and the Surf smelt and I think these   00:26:59.820 --> 00:27:00.420 are Surf smelt. 00:27:01.560 --> 00:27:07.080 And that's in contrast to Protection Island, where  we really only see two things: Sand lance and  00:27:07.080 --> 00:27:12.240 the herring. Although I should say sometimes, we do see salmon   00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:17.160 from time to time in both places. And this is an interesting thing. Sometimes you see an auklet   00:27:17.160 --> 00:27:19.440 eating a fish. That was in the midst of eating something else. 00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:26.640 So, this salmon was eating a herring, when the  auklet caught it and when we caught the auklet so  00:27:26.640 --> 00:27:31.920 that we could capture its bill load, we found this  little salmon that had a fish sticking out of it,  00:27:31.920 --> 00:27:36.480 and we dually extracted it,  and, oo'ed and awed over it. 00:27:36.480 --> 00:27:39.420 I don't know, it's just  one of the field delights.   00:27:40.980 --> 00:27:46.140 And so this is how their diets look over the  years. You can see that at Destruction Island, not  00:27:46.140 --> 00:27:52.140 only are they more varied in the main prey  species they eat, but their species can switch.   00:27:53.220 --> 00:28:00.960 So, what you're looking at here is a stacked  graph of, basically, species percent would be the  00:28:00.960 --> 00:28:04.560 percent of a species that  made up an auklet bill load.   00:28:05.160 --> 00:28:12.120 So here's the main thing to see. In this case,  gray, the gray bar, the gray part of the bar, is  00:28:12.120 --> 00:28:16.500 Northern anchovy, and the purple  part of the bar are smelt species.   00:28:16.500 --> 00:28:21.060 So you see that in 20 10, in 2010, auklets at Destruction,   00:28:21.060 --> 00:28:24.840 where mostly catching, anchovy and  a little bit of smelt. A little  00:28:24.840 --> 00:28:31.320 bit, the yellow is rockfish, and so they would  catch some juvenile rockfish. And then that held  00:28:31.320 --> 00:28:37.860 true, also in 2013 big anchovy, really big  anchovy year, no rockfish, but then in 2016,   00:28:37.860 --> 00:28:39.240 it started to change.   00:28:40.140 --> 00:28:46.800 So, you can see that the anchovies are becoming  less and less of the auklets bill loads. And in 2017 00:28:46.800 --> 00:28:50.520 the big red bar is herring,  and that's when herring appeared. 00:28:50.520 --> 00:28:56.160 And excuse me, Sand lance is  also pretty big that year too.  00:28:57.060 --> 00:28:58.800 Then as in 2018,   00:28:58.800 --> 00:29:03.720 it was big. It was a lot of smell, a lot  of herring, and very little anchovy. And  00:29:03.720 --> 00:29:06.420 then by 2019, the anchovy are mostly gone. 00:29:07.440 --> 00:29:13.680 Now it's predominantly smelt. A little bit of  Sand lance and some other. But you can see how  00:29:13.680 --> 00:29:16.740 even just in 10 years there  can be that pronounced of a   00:29:16.740 --> 00:29:22.440 shift in the auklet diet. And compare that to Protection Island where you can see is that   00:29:22.440 --> 00:29:29.100 it is mostly Sand lance and mostly herring all the time. There might be some wiggle in, you know,   00:29:29.100 --> 00:29:34.800 rough percentages of each, but it's still going to be a Sand lance and herring driven world there.   00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:43.980 So then the question becomes, you  know, if this is a story of climate   00:29:43.980 --> 00:29:46.800 resilience, how do we sort of classify the climate? 00:29:46.800 --> 00:29:49.920 So, you look at this picture and you think,  oh, my goodness, the Blob, you know, how do you  00:29:49.920 --> 00:29:59.220 begin to translate this kind of frightening image  into a data signature that you can use to uncover  00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:04.920 patterns of diet and breeding success? So  what you can do is look at a suite of marine  00:30:04.920 --> 00:30:10.320 conditions. And so, this is  a I acknowledge that this is 00:30:12.780 --> 00:30:15.840 quite a figure. But don't freak out. 00:30:15.840 --> 00:30:23.100 So the main thing to know here is  that the top two bars are basin wide,   00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:28.020 like huge measures. P D O is the Pacific Decadal   00:30:28.020 --> 00:30:33.180 Oscillation. That's a measure of sort  of the marine state of the Pacific as a  00:30:33.180 --> 00:30:40.080 whole. The M E I is the multivariate El Nino  index so that's kind of a rough measure of warmth. 00:30:41.460 --> 00:30:49.020 You know how inclined the Pacific is to be an  El Nino. Then you know it kind of works down. 00:30:49.020 --> 00:30:53.400 So, the next level as these region-wide things. So we've gone, we've gone from describing the  00:30:53.400 --> 00:31:00.240 whole Pacific Ocean to describing this, sort of  the northeast Pacific region around, you know,  00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:03.180 the California Current where to  be sort of upwelling indices.   00:31:03.180 --> 00:31:07.680 So the upwelling as you probably  as you may have heard, this is a big   00:31:07.680 --> 00:31:10.320 it's really important out here on the West Coast.   00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:14.640 That's what you know, seasonal upwelling  in the spring is what brings all  00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:19.620 these nutrients from the depths up to the surface  where they become accessible to phytoplankton  00:31:20.280 --> 00:31:23.760 and zooplankton. You know, they serve the base of the food web,   00:31:23.760 --> 00:31:27.720 which is why we have so much stuff out here, which is why it's so productive. 00:31:27.720 --> 00:31:33.180 And then the bottom, the  last eight graphs are sort   00:31:33.180 --> 00:31:39.360 of island-specific sea surface temperatures in the spring, and the summer, those are the top two,   00:31:39.360 --> 00:31:44.760 and then productivity measures, of sort of primary productivity. 00:31:45.780 --> 00:31:48.480 The other thing to note is that  the red band through each of   00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:53.880 these is the are the Blob years. And so what you see is that, in the Blob years,   00:31:53.880 --> 00:31:57.900 A lot of these metrics, a lot  of these indices, are either  00:31:57.900 --> 00:32:04.200 really high or really low compared to other years.  But it isn't necessarily consistent, you know. 00:32:04.200 --> 00:32:07.800 Sometimes, like, if you look  at Panel G, for instance,   00:32:07.800 --> 00:32:14.160 the spring, the sea surface temperature at Destruction Island in the summer, it was higher.   00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:17.400 It was elevated but it wasn't unusually elevated beyond other years. 00:32:17.400 --> 00:32:23.280 It was actually in, say, if you go up one to  E, the sea surface temperature in the spring at  00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:25.800 Destruction Island, that was  when it was really high. That   00:32:25.800 --> 00:32:28.020 was when you see its more pronounced Blob signature. 00:32:28.980 --> 00:32:32.040 So what you can do is you can  take all of these measures,   00:32:33.720 --> 00:32:38.460 12 of them mixed them up into this big kind of quantitative stew, and you come up with   00:32:38.460 --> 00:32:45.420 it with a sort of single index value that you can use to say, OK, in years when the that value was   00:32:45.420 --> 00:32:49.500 high, those are Blob years. When that value is low, those are just sort of more moderate years. 00:32:49.500 --> 00:32:55.260 And then you can compare that to different,  sort of breeding, you know, breeding success and  00:32:55.260 --> 00:33:01.380 diet characteristics and things like that. So when you do that, if you look at the   00:33:01.380 --> 00:33:05.340 breeding metrics over the years,  so here, this is looking at  00:33:05.340 --> 00:33:10.680 three different breeding metrics for the Rhinoceros auklets, again, with the Marine  00:33:10.680 --> 00:33:18.240 Heatwaves, the Blob here is highlighted in red,  and so the black line Destruction Island, the blue  00:33:18.240 --> 00:33:23.040 line is Protection Island. What you see is  that the auklets were actually, you know, pretty  00:33:23.040 --> 00:33:29.160 steady. The line that runs between the dots is  the sort of quantitative average, you know, to  00:33:29.160 --> 00:33:33.240 account for what may be observer error,  or things like that. What you see 00:33:33.240 --> 00:33:40.680 so A, the top panel, is burrow occupancy. And we  called, we considered a burrow, an auklet burrow  00:33:40.680 --> 00:33:43.620 to the occupied if the pair  was in it and had laid an egg. 00:33:43.620 --> 00:33:46.200 And so, you can see that  it's actually pretty high,   00:33:46.200 --> 00:33:49.740 all the time, especially at Protection. There's,  00:33:49.740 --> 00:33:55.320 it's, from 2010 to all through  the heatwave through 2016.   00:33:55.320 --> 00:34:00.720 It's, well, you know, nearly  80%, which is pretty good. 00:34:00.720 --> 00:34:05.220 You see a bit of a dip at  Destruction where between 2013,   00:34:06.060 --> 00:34:14.040 where it's near 70%, and then in 2014 it drops to about 50% and it stays low in 2015.   00:34:14.040 --> 00:34:20.280 It rises to maybe about 55% but then by 2016 it's gone back to about what it normally is. 00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:28.980 The same is true with hatch success. That means  the number of eggs that auklets lay that hatched  00:34:28.980 --> 00:34:33.240 chicks or chicks hatch from eggs, you know.  Because that can be a sort of a measure of the  00:34:33.240 --> 00:34:39.720 physical condition of the females. Or also, you  know, if a bird is incubating an egg and then  00:34:39.720 --> 00:34:44.700 suddenly it's having trouble finding food for  itself and you know it could just abandon,.   00:34:44.700 --> 00:34:50.040 abandon the nest and decide, you know, well, I'll  just try it next year, seabirds do that a lot. But  00:34:50.040 --> 00:34:54.480 you can see that at both islands, that  Destruction of Protection, that hatch   00:34:54.480 --> 00:34:55.500 success stayed pretty high.   00:34:56.160 --> 00:35:01.320 You know, there's a little bit of inner know,  inter year wobble but that's nothing out of the  00:35:01.320 --> 00:35:06.060 ordinary. And then with fledging success at the  bottom, fledging success is a measure of, well, if 00:35:06.060 --> 00:35:09.840 you have a chick, did that chick  survive to leave the nest to fledge   00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:12.060 or to leave the burrow and fledge and set out on its own? 00:35:13.620 --> 00:35:17.640 Here you see a little bit more of what  you can think of as a Blob effect.   00:35:18.420 --> 00:35:23.400 In the sense that, from 2014 to 2016, you see a   00:35:23.400 --> 00:35:27.960 pretty marked decline at Protection  Island. You see that blue sort of  00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:35.940 cascading from up over 80% in 2014, down  to about 50%, in 2016. But note, also, that  00:35:35.940 --> 00:35:38.400 Destruction Island, there's a  little bit of a dip, but it isn't, 00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:44.940 it isn't a huge one. Then by 2017, both islands are backup where   00:35:44.940 --> 00:35:49.080 they normally would be doing, do you know, ticking along doing pretty well. 00:35:50.640 --> 00:35:56.400 So basically, the main thing to note with  this is that the auklets didn't do too badly. 00:35:56.400 --> 00:36:02.040 You know, there was none of the, none of the  catastrophic declines that you saw with some other  00:36:02.040 --> 00:36:05.040 species and other places like the Common murre, 00:36:05.040 --> 00:36:10.860 the Cassin's auklet. There was no sort  of massive collapse, at least at the two   00:36:10.860 --> 00:36:11.940 colonies we looked at. 00:36:12.900 --> 00:36:14.760 Likewise, with prey species. So,   00:36:14.760 --> 00:36:19.200 one of the things that's a little  bit unfortunate, that's one of the,  00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:24.780 you know, sometimes you're like, Oh, if only, but  we only sampled diet for one of the Blob years  00:36:24.780 --> 00:36:28.020 at Destruction Island, and  that happened to be the year 00:36:28.020 --> 00:36:30.000 that was probably in the, you know, where the   00:36:30.600 --> 00:36:33.900 auklets were in the midst  of a long term transition  00:36:33.900 --> 00:36:41.760 away from anchovy over to smelt. But at Protection  Island, you know, I mean, the herring is a bit  00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:46.140 higher than the smelt or the Sand lance is  a bit lower. That's the blue and the red. 00:36:46.140 --> 00:36:51.780 But otherwise, it seems like  a year that was, years that were pretty stable. 00:36:53.160 --> 00:36:59.760 Similarly, with diet metrics. So these three  graphs, they show on the top graph is build load  00:36:59.760 --> 00:37:05.640 mass. So, how much all that fish that an auklet  was carrying would weigh, so a single auklet flies  00:37:05.640 --> 00:37:08.880 in with a bill load full of fish.  How much do all those fish weigh?   00:37:09.960 --> 00:37:12.900 The middle panel is how many fish makeup that bill load. So   00:37:12.900 --> 00:37:16.920 are the auklets bringing back say  one really big fish or many small  00:37:16.920 --> 00:37:22.200 fish? Then at the bottom is how much or  what's the nutritional value of those fish? 00:37:22.980 --> 00:37:30.720 You know, we have a way of converting the size  of a fish to how much energy it provides. And so  00:37:31.620 --> 00:37:34.800 again, you know, unlike with the breeding metrics,   00:37:34.800 --> 00:37:38.340 where we know there was a little bit of a decline, it was pretty steady here. 00:37:38.340 --> 00:37:42.300 You can see some pretty  pronounced island differences,   00:37:42.300 --> 00:37:46.080 and that different things are going on at the islands. So Destruction Island,   00:37:46.080 --> 00:37:52.620 you know, is pretty flat. Bill load masses,   00:37:52.620 --> 00:37:57.780 it shows a slight decline, but nothing  too, too serious. The number of fish  00:37:57.780 --> 00:38:02.640 that auklets were bringing back was a lot more  dynamic and varied. So, again, at Destruction  00:38:02.640 --> 00:38:06.720 Island, the black and gray,  that's, it's pretty steady. 00:38:06.720 --> 00:38:13.320 It's pretty, a flat band. But at Protection  Island, there's this big jump in the middle of the  00:38:14.340 --> 00:38:16.980 heatwave where suddenly they started  bringing back a lot more fish. 00:38:17.820 --> 00:38:21.180 And commensurately at the same  time or concurrently, sorry, 00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:29.820 the energy content of those fish of  the bill loads, dropped a bit in 2016. 00:38:29.820 --> 00:38:32.280 But then it came back by 2018. 00:38:33.960 --> 00:38:37.920 And so, the auklets I mean were  sitting pretty during the Blob. 00:38:37.920 --> 00:38:42.240 I mean, that was one of the things we had set  out, and we're, so, all of this work actually 00:38:42.240 --> 00:38:49.380 we just published a paper on it in a journal. And  when we were starting to write the paper, 00:38:49.380 --> 00:38:53.640 looking at 10 years of data and how I all  related a Blob, you were expecting to see, like,  00:38:53.640 --> 00:38:57.720 everywhere else, that, you know, the  auklets really took it in the shorts.   00:38:57.720 --> 00:39:06.060 But, instead, we saw a lot of, you know, localized  effects, local dynamics. And so it was  00:39:06.060 --> 00:39:08.760 interesting in that sense,  because a lot of the sort of Blob    00:39:09.480 --> 00:39:13.380 the stories /the narrative that has come out of the blob, is this wide scale,   00:39:14.400 --> 00:39:17.040 you know, broad scale effects  that were pretty uniform. 00:39:17.040 --> 00:39:23.220 You saw that, remember, that earlier graph that  showed, you know, everything kind of flipping or  00:39:23.220 --> 00:39:28.380 declining and then doing that. But it, I think  one of the values of this work, was showing that  00:39:28.380 --> 00:39:32.520 there's a lot, there can be a lot of  variation on small geographic scales. 00:39:32.520 --> 00:39:36.480 And that's so it's, it's worth it  looking at, you know, looking at   00:39:36.480 --> 00:39:39.480 different spots closely and watching them and seeing,   00:39:39.480 --> 00:39:42.060 you know, even if they're slightly  different, especially, actually appear  00:39:42.060 --> 00:39:44.520 in slightly different systems  how those systems respond. 00:39:45.240 --> 00:39:51.900 So, as I said, happy auklets. These are a couple of auklets, near the Salish Sea, looking   00:39:52.620 --> 00:39:56.880 strutty and sort of proud of themselves, but sadly, not so fast. 00:39:57.900 --> 00:40:01.080 Because now I go to the second  part of the talk, which is the   00:40:01.080 --> 00:40:05.280 Unusual Mortality Event, or a Postmodern Climate Mystery. 00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:11.640 So I'm returning to the  breeding metrics graph that   00:40:11.640 --> 00:40:18.480 you may recall. So this is where I want you to kinda zero in on one part of it. And that's this   00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:26.340 dot here, the low year in 2016. So, in terms of what is going on in that year 00:40:26.340 --> 00:40:30.960 that suddenly made it so much worse  than the other two years in the   00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:33.000 heart of the Blob. What happened in this year? 00:40:35.220 --> 00:40:41.700 And so, this year, in 2016, there was what we  call an unusual mortality event or a die off of  00:40:41.700 --> 00:40:49.380 auklets. This was in June of 2016, a visitor at  the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge reported  00:40:49.380 --> 00:40:54.240 seeing auklets walking on the beach that were,  quote, unquote, "kind of acting woozy". And then,  00:40:54.240 --> 00:41:00.540 subsequently, after that Refuge staff found seven  dead auklets on the beach and sent them to the  00:41:00.540 --> 00:41:05.040 US. Geological Survey Wildlife Health  Center, which is in Madison, Wisconsin. 00:41:06.720 --> 00:41:10.740 So sometimes, what happens is, if you find a  bunch of dead birds on a beach, and it looks like  00:41:10.740 --> 00:41:15.840 they're dying because of disease, or if they're,  you know, suddenly a lot of dead birds show up  00:41:15.840 --> 00:41:18.840 that haven't been there before, you  send them to find out if they're sick. 00:41:20.220 --> 00:41:23.820 And so the question was, where are these  few birds that we're showing up   00:41:24.540 --> 00:41:28.500 on Dungeness, were they  indicative of a larger trend? 00:41:28.500 --> 00:41:33.240 And so I am, this is what's  called the COASST Heartbeat. 00:41:33.240 --> 00:41:38.940 And the COASST is the Coastal Observation and  Seabird Survey Team. It's a program at the  00:41:38.940 --> 00:41:44.280 University of Washington that sends hundreds  of volunteers out every month to sites all over  00:41:44.280 --> 00:41:47.880 Oregon and Washington, and in Alaska. 00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:55.020 And they go out and each team has a little stretch  of beach to call their own. And they go walk  00:41:55.020 --> 00:41:57.900 that each once a month, and they count  all the dead stuff that they find.  00:41:57.900 --> 00:42:02.700 I mean dead birds. And this is focused pretty much   00:42:02.700 --> 00:42:07.440 on dead birds, but they do a lot of other work too. Now they've actually started working on   00:42:07.440 --> 00:42:09.120 marine debris, which is pretty cool. 00:42:09.120 --> 00:42:15.780 But what this is called, COASST, as the years go by, they  developed the COASST heartbeat. And that's what you  00:42:15.780 --> 00:42:20.580 can see here, is kind of the baseline, which is at  the bottom of each of these three graphs. That's  00:42:20.580 --> 00:42:25.500 just sort of da, da, da, da, da, which  is a periodic pulse of dead birds   00:42:25.500 --> 00:42:27.240 that happens every year, usually in the winter   00:42:28.080 --> 00:42:34.380 after young birds have fledged. They fledge at the  end of the summer. They fly out and to sea, the  00:42:34.380 --> 00:42:37.320 North Pacific is a pretty, can be a  pretty harsh environment in the winter.  00:42:37.320 --> 00:42:39.600 and so you get what's called kind of winter kill,   00:42:39.600 --> 00:42:44.220 and it's a regular feature, you know.  It's nothing to be too bothered by. I  00:42:44.220 --> 00:42:46.620 mean, you obviously ask that for  the individual birds themselves, but 00:42:48.180 --> 00:42:52.920 it's not a sign of something underlying, some  underlying badness that you need to be especially  00:42:52.920 --> 00:42:53.580 concerned about. 00:42:54.420 --> 00:43:01.560 But sometimes you get these pulses of death. And  you can see the top one in the Salish Sea, that  00:43:01.560 --> 00:43:05.640 is in the, one on the far  right, those big red spikes,   00:43:05.640 --> 00:43:08.760 those were 2016 and that, those are the years  00:43:08.760 --> 00:43:15.000 of the auklet die off. This auklet die off diagram  is from Protection. But the other thing that's  00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.140 interesting to notice is that there are actually  a lot of little spikes periodically. So, 00:43:20.340 --> 00:43:22.980 you can see, there was one, you know, a month in   00:43:23.820 --> 00:43:28.140 2006 on the Washington Outer coast and on the Oregon coast, where suddenly they found   00:43:28.140 --> 00:43:32.520 a whole bunch of dead auklets. But, you know, that wasn't, that's also thought to be climate related.   00:43:32.520 --> 00:43:38.220 And then another time. In 2012, they found a bunch. But, the one that I'm focusing on is 2016. 00:43:39.120 --> 00:43:40.920 And so, that's the, you know,   00:43:40.920 --> 00:43:44.340 this is what it looks like a little  more closely as this, if I say kinda,  00:43:47.340 --> 00:43:49.380 it persisted. I guess that's  sort of the point of this. 00:43:49.380 --> 00:43:58.800 As you can see, it started in June and then there  was a big spike, it just suddenly shut up, in sort  00:43:58.800 --> 00:44:03.240 of late summer. You know, June, July, August, a  little bit in September and then it stopped.   00:44:03.240 --> 00:44:08.280 It went back down and then we're back  to just the normal COASST heartbeat.   00:44:10.740 --> 00:44:14.640 That, yes, that's the die off. And so this is  what it looked like sort of geographically. 00:44:14.640 --> 00:44:22.020 So this is, these are data from COASST and the  BCBBS it's the British Columbia Beach Bird Survey  00:44:22.020 --> 00:44:29.280 data. The A is May, B is  June, C is July. D is August. 00:44:29.280 --> 00:44:37.080 And so, the different colors of the dots show  whether or not - if it's red, it was a dedicated  00:44:37.080 --> 00:44:43.560 survey by either COASST or BCBBS,  or in the blue as opportunistic. 00:44:43.560 --> 00:44:48.120 So it's just somebody who happens to be out  or I mean is out looking but isn't part of   00:44:48.120 --> 00:44:49.020 the survey effort. 00:44:49.020 --> 00:44:57.780 So you can see that in May suddenly there's a  lot showing up on Dungeness Spit. Then in June and  00:44:57.780 --> 00:45:05.580 July it spreads widely, you know, suddenly  across in Sydney, on the San Juan’s, on Whidbey  00:45:05.580 --> 00:45:12.060 Island, and farther out. You know, that's about one  of those dots on the outer side of that of that 00:45:12.060 --> 00:45:16.800 circle is Anacortes and a little bit out onto the  Outer Coast. But suddenly there are a lot of dead  00:45:16.800 --> 00:45:17.400 auklets. 00:45:17.400 --> 00:45:24.180 And that goes on through June and July, but always  you know this at Destruction, or, excuse me,  00:45:24.180 --> 00:45:28.680 at Dungeness Spit they' re always finding a  lot of stuff. And then by August in D,   00:45:28.680 --> 00:45:31.920 it's pretty it started to calm down quite a bit. 00:45:33.420 --> 00:45:41.520 So, when they sent the carcasses to the National  Wildlife Health Center in Madison, they found  00:45:41.520 --> 00:45:48.660 out that there was a bacterial pathogen after a  necropsy was done. And so, this was, this is the paper that  00:45:48.660 --> 00:45:52.260 came out of it, the title of it, the  Detection of.. the bacterial pathogen  00:45:52.260 --> 00:45:55.140 is called Bisgaard Taxon 40. That's one of the things,   00:45:55.140 --> 00:45:59.520 where, they're just so many, so many  different diseases that they don't all  00:45:59.520 --> 00:46:04.920 have cool names. Sometimes, that's just pure taxon, Bisgaard Taxon 40, which I think has been recently  00:46:04.920 --> 00:46:12.420 renamed to something similarly more clinical  and if I may be boring, but this was from when  00:46:12.420 --> 00:46:15.300 they were hot to trot 2019, so they hopped on it.   00:46:15.300 --> 00:46:22.440 And this is an image from that paper showing the  pathology of sickened birds with lesions that ,you  00:46:22.440 --> 00:46:24.360 know, were associated with  the bacterial infection.   00:46:24.360 --> 00:46:31.020 And there, you know, that there's some on the lungs  and some in the pectoral muscles. So that, you  00:46:31.020 --> 00:46:37.440 know, these were sick birds and they had been,  they had been sort of enfeebled. But the authors of  00:46:37.440 --> 00:46:41.580 that paper made an interesting note. As they  said, we do not know whether Bisgaard Taxon 40  00:46:41.580 --> 00:46:46.980 acted as a primary pathogen or given the emaciated  good body condition of these birds simply as  00:46:46.980 --> 00:46:51.000 opportunistic pathogens. So, it  was kind of a chicken - egg question. 00:46:53.160 --> 00:46:54.420 Where, was is it that   00:46:55.560 --> 00:46:59.520 you know, the birds are really skinny. You know,  there's, I mean, there's some sort of veterinary  00:46:59.520 --> 00:47:03.840 debate about what emaciated really means, but the  birds, the birds that they were looking at were  00:47:03.840 --> 00:47:07.800 pretty skinny. And that was kind of a feature of  what people are finding, were skinny dead birds. So  00:47:07.800 --> 00:47:10.860 where they were skinny, because  they were sick, or were they sick 00:47:10.860 --> 00:47:17.700 did they get sick because they were skinny? In  other words, was it the pathogen that caused the  00:47:17.700 --> 00:47:22.380 death? Or was it something else, and that's  something else, was the probable prey.   00:47:23.640 --> 00:47:27.660 So that leaves us with the question,  is there a way to determine this   00:47:27.660 --> 00:47:31.200 sort of causative agent here? Can we, can we actually get to the   00:47:32.400 --> 00:47:37.500 answer to this chicken or egg question? And, you know, this has, this is what we're   00:47:37.500 --> 00:47:40.080 working on now. So it hasn't been put through peer review.   00:47:40.080 --> 00:47:46.200 But I would, say here, you know, feeling wild and  daring that it is possible to at least, you know,  00:47:46.200 --> 00:47:51.660 take some of the methods that we used or focus  on Protection Island and maybe look at several  00:47:51.660 --> 00:47:57.300 lines of evidence that we can use to approach  this question. And so those things that we use are  00:47:57.300 --> 00:48:00.840 burrow occupancy again. This is a picture of the   00:48:00.840 --> 00:48:05.100 side of Protection Island, that sort  of rumpled character of the bluff. 00:48:05.100 --> 00:48:10.200 It's all those are all burrows. So, I mean, this  just gives you a sense of just how many burrows  00:48:10.200 --> 00:48:13.920 there are just on this one side of  this fairly large island. I mean,   00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:17.340 this probably contains well over a 1,000 or 2,000 burrows. 00:48:18.480 --> 00:48:21.180 And then, again, we look at fledging  success. Here's this guy again -   00:48:22.380 --> 00:48:27.660 our friend. We look at the marine conditions. And so, here what I did was I pulled out the ones   00:48:27.660 --> 00:48:34.020 that we used for Protection Island. So, again, we go from a large, you know, basin-scale   00:48:35.640 --> 00:48:38.580 metrics like the PDO or the  Pacific Decadal Oscillation   00:48:38.580 --> 00:48:43.380 and the multivariate El Nino Index, the measure of El Nino. But then everything else   00:48:43.380 --> 00:48:49.320 was local. you know, the sea surface temperatures in the spring and the summer, and net primary   00:48:49.320 --> 00:48:53.880 productivity in the spring and summer, and then the last two this measure of upwelling.   00:48:55.080 --> 00:48:59.640 Then here, again, The red band is the Blob  years because the die off took place in the   00:48:59.640 --> 00:49:00.540 last year of the Blob. 00:49:03.060 --> 00:49:06.060 Then, again, not last but not least, we  look at prey abundance and condition. 00:49:06.060 --> 00:49:11.220 So to remember this graph, but now with  the Blob sort of situated over it again.   00:49:12.840 --> 00:49:17.100 And but the other thing that we can do is, we  can do a little bit more because at the same time  00:49:17.100 --> 00:49:22.860 that while we are measuring the prey that the  auklets are catching, NOAA’s researchers, NOAA’s  00:49:22.860 --> 00:49:29.160 biologists are doing these beach seines along  the Northern Olympic Peninsula coast - the north  00:49:29.160 --> 00:49:34.500 coast of Northern Olympic Peninsula. And so we  can look at how the auklets are doing compared  00:49:34.500 --> 00:49:36.000 to how the beach seines are doing. 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:40.320 And the interesting thing, this  is all the beach seine sites   00:49:40.320 --> 00:49:44.340 that folks were using, you can see all, they are sort of classed them by area. 00:49:44.340 --> 00:49:51.120 And here's Protection island here, this little  spot and most of these sites. So an auklet can fly,  00:49:51.120 --> 00:49:55.920 since an auklet is spending the entire day  foraging so that it can bring back one 00:49:55.920 --> 00:50:02.880 mouthful of fish to it’s chicks, it can fly  a long way. We know that they can go about 50  00:50:02.880 --> 00:50:08.220 kilometers or at least and sometimes even more . So, you can see at the bottom here, the scale of 50  00:50:08.220 --> 00:50:13.500 kilometers is a good chunk. And so that's, you  know, out pretty, you know, an auklet without  00:50:13.500 --> 00:50:17.640 really breaking a sweat, can get out to Port  Angeles. And maybe you know, if it wants to the  00:50:17.640 --> 00:50:21.060 Elwha River or it may not go there at all, you  know, I got up to the San Juans or something.   00:50:21.060 --> 00:50:23.940 But the point is, that the auklets can range far,   00:50:23.940 --> 00:50:28.740 and this is how we get a sense of how they're doing versus how the beach seine is doing. 00:50:29.460 --> 00:50:35.520 And so, this is when you, when you take all of  those and take all of those metrics, that are  00:50:35.520 --> 00:50:39.420 occupancy rates, fledgling success rates, marine conditions.   00:50:39.420 --> 00:50:42.540 And then you look at the two  main species that they're eating:   00:50:43.500 --> 00:50:47.460 Pacific sand lance, Pacific herring, and then the bottom is catch per   00:50:47.460 --> 00:50:53.100 unit effort, Which is a measure of how hard the seiners are working or the beach seiners are   00:50:53.100 --> 00:50:54.450 working to catch fish. 00:50:54.450 --> 00:51:01.380 And so here the red bar shows  the last two years of the Blob. 00:51:01.380 --> 00:51:04.140 The gray bar is the year of the die off. 00:51:04.140 --> 00:51:11.700 So if you look at the proportion of burrows  with eggs, the burrow occupancy rates, they were  00:51:11.700 --> 00:51:16.140 elevated actually in the year of the die off, but  it was fledging success that really dove. That  00:51:16.140 --> 00:51:21.420 was. If you recall that the value was down  at about 50%, which was much lower than the  00:51:21.420 --> 00:51:23.460 average, that's what the dashed lines show. 00:51:23.460 --> 00:51:29.520 So the average fledging success over the long  term study is around 80%. And that year, it was  00:51:29.520 --> 00:51:33.180 quite low. When I talked  about the marine conditions,  00:51:33.180 --> 00:51:38.340 so that's the PC1 is when you take them all and you put them into the stew and you get that   00:51:38.340 --> 00:51:41.760 single value, and if the value is high, that means the Blob.   00:51:42.660 --> 00:51:46.620 So this is what you can see is in the year  of the die off, you're still living with   00:51:46.620 --> 00:51:48.660 Blob conditions in the Salish Sea.   00:51:50.220 --> 00:51:52.200 Then they plunged, you know, that 00:51:52.200 --> 00:51:56.940 the marine conditions became a lot more moderate. 00:51:57.960 --> 00:52:05.580 Then, if you look at the prey type, what the  Pacific sand lance and Pacific herring graph is  00:52:05.580 --> 00:52:11.700 showing is the comparison between how the auklets 00:52:11.700 --> 00:52:15.960 did, this individual size of fish that  the auklet caught and the individual   00:52:15.960 --> 00:52:20.760 the size of individual fish that the NOAA Survey caught. 00:52:20.760 --> 00:52:25.020 And so, the thing to note in  both of these, is how the   00:52:25.020 --> 00:52:31.200 auklet usually does better than the survey, you know, because the auklet can target fish,   00:52:31.200 --> 00:52:33.960 it can move around. There  are all sorts and sort of  00:52:33.960 --> 00:52:38.220 caveats about making a comparison  between an auklet and a static survey.   00:52:38.220 --> 00:52:43.200 But the thing to note is that in  most years the auklet does a lot   00:52:43.200 --> 00:52:49.620 better except in 2016 and for herring in 2016 and 2017. 00:52:49.620 --> 00:52:53.700 So for all the inherent advantages that an auklet 00:52:53.700 --> 00:53:01.260 has as a foragers as a hunter of  fish in 2016 and 2017, in 2016 00:53:01.260 --> 00:53:06.060 especially, and in a lesser degree in 2017, it didn't do very well. 00:53:06.960 --> 00:53:13.200 They weren't, they did, something made it so that  those auklets weren't doing that great, and that  00:53:13.200 --> 00:53:17.040 is a little it's sort of  reinforced by the the bottom years  00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:20.820 or by the bottom graph, which shows catch per unit effort. 00:53:20.820 --> 00:53:29.160 And that you can see that in the Blob years, you  know, the first year they were able to catch - the  00:53:29.160 --> 00:53:34.320 beach seine was able to catch a pretty good  amount of herring. There is a lot of you  know, variation  00:53:34.320 --> 00:53:37.860 between the sites. That's why the  little whisker over the dot is so long. 00:53:37.860 --> 00:53:44.700 But then, it just plunged, you know, in 2016,  2017, 2018, just really low. They, they weren't,  00:53:44.700 --> 00:53:48.960 catching very much for as hard as they were  you know, as hard as they were working. 00:53:49.920 --> 00:53:53.400 Then, by 2019, it went back up  to what it would normally be.   00:53:54.180 --> 00:54:02.940 And so, that's sort of begins to point to an  answer of, you know, there was something in 2016  00:54:02.940 --> 00:54:07.680 that made it, you know, while they, that made it to  the auklets which normally would be able to do  00:54:07.680 --> 00:54:12.540 better than the seine, even in years when ,  00:54:14.040 --> 00:54:18.300 even in difficult years, like the  Blob years, that there was  00:54:18.300 --> 00:54:20.760 something in 2016 that made it  so that they did very poorly. 00:54:21.300 --> 00:54:23.520 And that is further reinforced 00:54:23.520 --> 00:54:29.040 if you look back at the Diet Metrics graph,  that in 2016, that was the year 00:54:29.040 --> 00:54:33.780 so this is, you know, putting the die  off band over this, you know, the gray. 00:54:33.780 --> 00:54:38.580 You can see that's a year when the energy of the  bill loads was really, really low. And the number  00:54:38.580 --> 00:54:44.700 of fish that they were catching was a lot higher,  and their bill load mass was, was lower, too. So  00:54:44.700 --> 00:54:50.580 you go from you know, in the middle  of the heatwave mind you in 2015, 00:54:50.580 --> 00:54:55.560 There were bill load masses high, the number of  fish were low. So, it's like they're catching big  00:54:55.560 --> 00:55:01.200 fish and the energy was high so that they were  catching, they were, they had nice big fish. 00:55:01.200 --> 00:55:06.780 They didn't have to catch a lot of them and they  were energetically nutritious. But in 2016, the  00:55:06.780 --> 00:55:10.920 year of the die off, their bill load  mass dropped, they had to catch a lot   00:55:10.920 --> 00:55:13.980 more small fish and the energy was really low.   00:55:15.300 --> 00:55:22.800 So, this is another thing to really look at is  a comparison between 2016 and 2017. Because in  00:55:22.800 --> 00:55:26.460 those years you know, the conditions,  if you remember, were mostly the same.   00:55:26.460 --> 00:55:31.080 That was still a low year for the  catch per unit effort of herring.   00:55:31.740 --> 00:55:38.160 But in that year, you know, the auklets, the bill  load mass was a little bit elevated but the number  00:55:38.160 --> 00:55:43.140 of fish was much higher. So if you take the number  of fish to mean a kind of foraging effort, they  00:55:43.140 --> 00:55:46.620 are working hard and they're able  to work harder to catch more fish.   00:55:46.620 --> 00:55:51.120 So that was when you started to see the energy  kind of creep back up. Because something, you  00:55:51.120 --> 00:55:57.060 know, between 2016 and 2017, in 2017 when they  weren't sick, they are able to expend a little  00:55:57.060 --> 00:56:05.340 more energy catch more fish. And those fish  were know that raised the energy content of  00:56:05.340 --> 00:56:08.640 those bill loads that they brought back to  their chicks, so that their chicks did better. 00:56:09.420 --> 00:56:12.540 And so there are some other clues  that we could kind of look at. 00:56:13.260 --> 00:56:19.140 The, you know, we looked at  marine pollutant levels in the   00:56:22.140 --> 00:56:24.660 bodies and they were, they were considerably, they're a lot elevated.   00:56:24.660 --> 00:56:33.480 So these are organic chlorides and PBDEs or  Polybrominade something, something like that.  00:56:33.480 --> 00:56:38.460 I’m not a chemist. Oh,  polybrominated diphenyl ethers. 00:56:38.460 --> 00:56:40.620 Yeah. I had it right there. 00:56:41.640 --> 00:56:46.260 But anyway, these were elevated in dead  auklets compared to other auklets that have been  00:56:46.260 --> 00:56:49.140 caught in other years. So  in the die off year, there   00:56:49.140 --> 00:56:56.820 were marine pollutants in their bodies and in their fat. And so if your food stressed, you start   00:56:56.820 --> 00:57:02.700 to sort of use your body fat. And if you're, if you're metabolizing your body fat and your body fat   00:57:02.700 --> 00:57:06.180 is full of marine pollutants, that's not good for you. 00:57:07.680 --> 00:57:13.620 And the other thing is by looking at their body  condition. So, the body condition of the dead  00:57:13.620 --> 00:57:18.540 auklets, as I mentioned in 2016, they showed signs of emaciation,   00:57:19.260 --> 00:57:20.820 but some were in fair condition too.   00:57:23.040 --> 00:57:28.740 So, then, it becomes was it just kind of just a perfect  storm of a year? So you had marine conditions that  00:57:28.740 --> 00:57:31.140 were suboptimal because it was  the last year of the Blob.   00:57:31.680 --> 00:57:37.020 The prey quality was low because, you know,  because of the Blob in part. They were having  00:57:37.020 --> 00:57:39.780 trouble finding fish and then  there weren't, there weren't that   00:57:39.780 --> 00:57:42.660 many fish to find, and a lot of the fish they were finding were smaller. 00:57:43.560 --> 00:57:50.100 Because they were having trouble finding fish,  they were catabolizing their own sort of fat stores. 00:57:50.100 --> 00:57:52.800 And those fat stores were  full of marine pollutants. 00:57:52.800 --> 00:57:57.420 And so, they were, you know, that further kind  of made them sick and then throw into that, you  00:57:57.420 --> 00:58:02.880 know, the specialness of that year was the  marine pathogen, that Bisgaard taxon 40 which  00:58:02.880 --> 00:58:06.960 showed up, and so you have the foods stressed  auklets that were already weakened because they  00:58:06.960 --> 00:58:10.980 increased contaminant load, then this pathogen  comes in and makes them sick, and because of  00:58:10.980 --> 00:58:17.280 that, that perfect little box right in the  middle, which leads to lots of dead auklets.   00:58:17.280 --> 00:58:26.940 And then, another question is, is it because with  wildlife disease, you know, wildlife disease is  00:58:26.940 --> 00:58:33.000 predicted to increase with climate change,  sort of worsening, becoming more severe because  00:58:33.000 --> 00:58:38.400 generally warmer waters are sicker waters. And  so the question that people wonder as if this  00:58:38.400 --> 00:58:42.660 pathogen is sort of always present if,  you know, just kinda at background rates 00:58:43.380 --> 00:58:48.840 or you know, background levels? And then because  of this, suddenly warmer conditions it did  00:58:48.840 --> 00:58:53.760 have suddenly just kinda flared up. And there's  some folks doing some blood work right now to  00:58:53.760 --> 00:58:58.440 look at auklets during reasonable years  and more moderate years, to see if the   00:58:58.440 --> 00:59:00.780 disease is just always kinda there. 00:59:02.640 --> 00:59:06.120 And so that, I mean, that's sort of  where we are with that right now. 00:59:07.080 --> 00:59:13.860 I think it's kinda one of the neat things about,  you know, how questions work in science. Where  00:59:13.860 --> 00:59:19.260 you can, know, you start with something, like we  started with this question, How did rhinoceros  00:59:19.260 --> 00:59:24.660 auklets fair in the Blob years? We found a kind  of provisional answer to that they did pretty  00:59:24.660 --> 00:59:29.460 OK. But then, you know, from that comes all  these other questions about, you know, well why  00:59:29.460 --> 00:59:33.720 did they do poorly in one particular year? And  this one particular place? And then suddenly  00:59:33.720 --> 00:59:37.860 you're exploring elements of wildlife  disease. You're looking at interactions   00:59:37.860 --> 00:59:40.200 between physiology and ecology. 00:59:42.660 --> 00:59:48.840 All of this is kind of born of just, you know,  settling in and watching animals in a place, in a  00:59:48.840 --> 00:59:54.720 fairly straightforward manner, just looking at  how they do, you know, how many are laying eggs, hw  00:59:54.720 --> 01:00:00.660 many chicks are fledging? And conceptually these  are fairly simple questions and but from these 01:00:00.660 --> 01:00:05.760 simple questions, you'd be able to uncover these  large natural experiments that are going on right  01:00:05.760 --> 01:00:09.720 in front of you. And so one of the things that  we're doing now as we kind of move forward is  01:00:09.720 --> 01:00:14.460 we're starting to put, we're putting GPS tags  on auklets to see where they're going to fish  01:00:14.460 --> 01:00:19.260 because if you remember, they tend to do better  than just sort of the general seine, the general  01:00:19.260 --> 01:00:23.640 survey. And so we want to know what the  auklets know about the Salish Sea as a space. 01:00:23.640 --> 01:00:28.620 How do they know, in years that we think conditions   01:00:28.620 --> 01:00:32.220 might be a little more severe, how do they know where to go? Or where do they go to find   01:00:32.220 --> 01:00:37.140 food? And, are those places / spots that we can try to protect on their behalf. 01:00:37.860 --> 01:00:40.500 So, watch this space of other  words, There's, there's still   01:00:40.500 --> 01:00:45.180 interesting auklet stuff happening. And so, now, I'm happy to take questions. 01:00:46.500 --> 01:00:50.334 Yeah, and that’s it as far as I am. 01:00:50.334 --> 01:00:52.080 [Grant] Thank you, Eric. Awesome. 01:00:53.640 --> 01:00:54.360 [Eric] There we go. 01:00:56.520 --> 01:00:57.240 All right. 01:00:59.760 --> 01:01:03.540 So, since we have a little bit of  time, hopefully folks can stay with us, 01:01:04.740 --> 01:01:08.880 Give us an opportunity to ask you some of the  questions that have been put into the question  01:01:08.880 --> 01:01:19.920 box. I'm just gonna kinda go in order. And Grant,   I'm assuming you will take turns with me?   01:01:20.640 --> 01:01:21.140 [Grant] Yeah, I'm trying to find those questions right now. 01:01:21.140 --> 01:01:25.080 [Chris] OK. 01:01:26.520 --> 01:01:30.900 All right, so the very first one we  have is from Michelle and she asked   01:01:30.900 --> 01:01:34.620 Did the Blob affect Humpback whales? 01:01:36.540 --> 01:01:39.000 [Eric] Yes. I think.  01:01:40.560 --> 01:01:45.180 I mean the Blob affected everything in  different ways. I'm not a whale guy so I should  01:01:45.180 --> 01:01:48.600 probably not get too far out over my skis.   01:01:48.600 --> 01:01:53.640 But I think there are a lot of, I mean, one of the  main effects that you saw were, things that didn't  01:01:53.640 --> 01:01:58.440 necessarily die, but you saw a lot of  range shifts. You saw things going places 01:01:58.440 --> 01:02:05.820 they normally wouldn't go to look for food. And I think, if I’m remembering correctly, that  01:02:05.820 --> 01:02:10.020 might be sort of where it showed up with Humpbacks.  It wasn't, I don't think they had that,   01:02:11.040 --> 01:02:16.920 this is when I dimly recall I heard this  thing, I might have read somewhere once. 01:02:18.000 --> 01:02:23.940 But yeah, now essentially I have a friend who  works on whale entanglement and with Humpback  01:02:23.940 --> 01:02:29.220 and is looking at it kind of as they move  more up into these sort of crab pot waters. 01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:34.620 How there are a lot more kinds of  encounters with human fishers, fisheries,   01:02:34.620 --> 01:02:35.760 and that's becoming a thing. 01:02:35.760 --> 01:02:41.280 And so this expectation that as marine conditions  changed, the Humpbacks range is, you know,  01:02:41.280 --> 01:02:46.200 bringing it more into kind of human - wildlife,  conflict zones, I guess you could say.  01:02:46.200 --> 01:02:49.200 [Grant] Cool. The   01:02:49.200 --> 01:02:53.760 next question is from Krista and it says,  Protection Island and Destruction Island, who  01:02:53.760 --> 01:02:58.860 gave these islands their rather unusual names  and why? [Eric] Oh, that is, such a fantastic question! 01:02:59.700 --> 01:03:03.420 So I am working on a book about  Rhinoceros auklets actually,   01:03:03.420 --> 01:03:07.620 and, so I've been spending a lot of time with the histories of these two islands. 01:03:07.620 --> 01:03:14.160 And Destruction Island, in particular,  is roiled, I guess, you could say. 01:03:14.160 --> 01:03:20.880 So, if you, this is one of those things, and I'll have to be very careful not to go  01:03:20.880 --> 01:03:24.180 off on this really long tangent.  But it's one of those things   01:03:24.180 --> 01:03:27.240 where you look at the sort of official account, and then you compare sort of   01:03:27.240 --> 01:03:30.240 other voices, shall we say? So the official account,   01:03:30.240 --> 01:03:36.360 for the name of Destruction Island,  is that, in 1775, the Spanish were  01:03:37.440 --> 01:03:46.980 sailing up the coast of, what is now Washington,  and there it was Bruno de Hezeta, who's, I hope  01:03:46.980 --> 01:03:52.800 I'm saying his name correctly. But, anyway,  he's commemorated by Heceta Head, I think, in Oregon. 01:03:52.800 --> 01:04:01.440 And so, it was him and his sort of lieutenant Bodega y Quadra or Bodega, I think it was a  01:04:01.440 --> 01:04:07.860 Bodega, and they came up to what's now, you know,  what we call Point Grenville, and, and they,  01:04:07.860 --> 01:04:09.360 they were in these two ships. And so,   01:04:12.000 --> 01:04:21.360 Hezeta kept anchored at Grenville, and Bodega  was a little bit north, and near the mouth  01:04:21.360 --> 01:04:26.640 of the, what's now, you know, the Quinault  River. And Hezeta went ashore, and he did a, 01:04:26.640 --> 01:04:31.080 he and a large crew of people went  ashore and did a land claiming ceremony. 01:04:31.080 --> 01:04:34.080 And while that was happening,  I think a little farther north,   01:04:34.080 --> 01:04:37.320 Bodega sent a small contingent of his  01:04:37.860 --> 01:04:46.200 sailors ashore to collect water and cut down a  tree to make a new top mast. And when the small  01:04:46.200 --> 01:04:50.820 crew of seven and a little boat, when they get  ashore they are, as the state says, attacked by  01:04:50.820 --> 01:04:57.660 Indians. So suddenly 300 Indians appear and  kill the Bodega sailors, and that's that. 01:04:59.400 --> 01:05:03.360 And then the Spanish, you know, they're upset. 01:05:04.260 --> 01:05:09.360 They sail on, but not before  they name the but, you know,   01:05:09.360 --> 01:05:13.620 Point Grenville they name it Punta de los Martires, "the point of the martyrs." 01:05:13.620 --> 01:05:21.300 And then in 1787, this English fellow, that's  English fur trader, I think he was Charles Barkley,  01:05:21.300 --> 01:05:29.520 is sailing up the same stretch and he anchors,  near the island, Destruction Island near the river  01:05:29.520 --> 01:05:35.580 there, which is now the Hoh River. And he sends  a small contingent ashore, and they get killed  01:05:35.580 --> 01:05:37.740 by the Indidians. You know, they  are massacred by the Indians.  01:05:38.760 --> 01:05:43.860 So he named the river where his   01:05:43.860 --> 01:05:45.690 sailors died Destruction River. 01:05:45.690 --> 01:05:52.320 And then in 1792, when George Vancouver  was coming up with sailing up the shore, he  01:05:52.320 --> 01:05:55.380 renamed the river. You know, they're the English,   01:05:55.380 --> 01:06:00.120 you're trying to kind of get rid of the Spanish names, although they didn't fully succeed. 01:06:01.200 --> 01:06:06.720 But he renames the river, the Hoh river, and he  takes the name Destruction River, and he puts it  01:06:06.720 --> 01:06:12.900 on Destruction Island. He names that. Because  Bodega had also named it so they named it. As he  01:06:12.900 --> 01:06:17.700 says, or the archives say, the Punta de los  Martires ,from that point of the martyrs. And they  01:06:17.700 --> 01:06:21.240 named the island Isla de  Dolores, the Island of Sorrows. 01:06:21.240 --> 01:06:24.780 So, the English come through,  they rename the river 01:06:26.580 --> 01:06:27.300 the Hoh river, 01:06:27.300 --> 01:06:31.800 for the people that live there. They renamed the  island from the Island of Sorrows to Destruction,  01:06:31.800 --> 01:06:34.440 Island, and Destruction Island,  it has remained ever since. 01:06:35.400 --> 01:06:42.120 So what you have is this kind of narrative of  explorers minding their own business, and then the  01:06:42.120 --> 01:06:50.880 Indians attack, for no reason whatsoever. The  actual history as a lot more complicated, as you  01:06:50.880 --> 01:06:56.700 might imagine. And there's a really, really good  book to read called The Sea Is My Country by  01:06:56.700 --> 01:07:02.760 Josh Reid, which is the maritime history of the  Makah. And that gets into some of the twists and  01:07:02.760 --> 01:07:08.700 turns of that particular tale which show that,  you know, it isn't like the Spanish just went, you  01:07:08.700 --> 01:07:11.460 know, just said, Oh, shoot, the natives killed our people, 01:07:11.460 --> 01:07:14.760 I guess we'll move on. They actually did quite a lot of killing on their own. 01:07:14.760 --> 01:07:23.580 And also, there's some mixed identity.  it's thought that it was Quinaults 01:07:23.580 --> 01:07:26.640 who may have, you know, who killed Bodegas' 01:07:26.640 --> 01:07:30.840 men. But Bodegas, men may have killed  Quileutes who are coming to help because of  01:07:30.840 --> 01:07:37.920 complicated polity, you know, the politics of the  Coast Salish time. You know, it wasn't like, you  01:07:37.920 --> 01:07:42.960 know, these aren't all, one people doing all one  thing. There's a lot of internal dynamics the  01:07:42.960 --> 01:07:45.360 Spanish were ignorant of and just sailing into. 01:07:46.140 --> 01:07:53.340 So, anyway, Destruction Island, it's resonantly  named, you know, in that sense of like, well, it's  01:07:53.340 --> 01:07:57.120 named for the destruction  supposedly of the sailors,   01:07:57.120 --> 01:08:02.460 but it's, it's as an island standing sentinel, you know, to who exactly is it watching be destroyed 01:08:02.460 --> 01:08:07.140 as the years progressed? Probably  not really the Spanish and English.   01:08:07.140 --> 01:08:10.800 And then Protection Island was named by Vancouver. 01:08:11.460 --> 01:08:13.680 And it's got its own kind of interesting history. 01:08:16.500 --> 01:08:18.060 It's a little more contemporary. 01:08:18.660 --> 01:08:25.260 Of how people, you know that once it  was sort of fully absorbed into, you know,  01:08:25.260 --> 01:08:29.280 Washington State, there was this effort  to as you probably may have heard there was   01:08:29.940 --> 01:08:32.160 an effort to sort of turn it into a   01:08:32.160 --> 01:08:35.940 housing subdivision. They actually plotted  the land and we're going to sell it so  01:08:35.940 --> 01:08:40.140 that people could build homes. But it  turns out that there wasn't potable water. 01:08:40.140 --> 01:08:45.420 The water was undrinkable, which seems like  the sort of thing you would want to establish  01:08:45.420 --> 01:08:51.600 before you started selling land or at least buying  land. Maybe you're free to sell whatever you  01:08:51.600 --> 01:08:56.040 want, unfortunately, but maybe, before you buy,  make sure you'll have water to drink. But there's  01:08:56.040 --> 01:09:00.540 one fellow out there, Marty Bluewater,  who was sort of grandfathered in  01:09:00.540 --> 01:09:01.800 and still has a house out there. 01:09:03.060 --> 01:09:08.340 But anyway, it's called Protection, I think you  know, the Strait of Juan de Fuca can get pretty  01:09:08.340 --> 01:09:09.060 exciting, 01:09:11.280 --> 01:09:17.040 maritimely, I guess you could say. You know and  if you, but if you want a nice place to sit and  01:09:17.040 --> 01:09:19.440 ride out the waves, Protection  was a good place to do it. 01:09:22.020 --> 01:09:23.700 [Grant] Excellent. Thank you. 01:09:24.360 --> 01:09:33.660 [Chris] Yeah, interesting stories there. So, we have a question from Donna: Did the   01:09:33.660 --> 01:09:39.720 Blob negatively affect fish population which is resulting in the auklets being forced to   01:09:39.720 --> 01:09:43.620 eat different kinds of fish?  [Eric] That's a good question.   01:09:44.520 --> 01:09:49.260 Presumably, the answer is yes. There are  some species that weren't doing so well.   01:09:49.260 --> 01:09:52.860 There are others that point  to doing a little better. 01:09:52.860 --> 01:09:59.040 The, I mean, it seems like the shift away from  anchovies have been going on for several years,  01:09:59.040 --> 01:10:04.020 and maybe the Blob kind of  finished them off as it were.   01:10:05.580 --> 01:10:09.900 But I think anchovies in other  places have also been doing poorly. 01:10:09.900 --> 01:10:14.640 And, you know, what matters, the  interesting thing with the auklets   01:10:14.640 --> 01:10:19.620 is there are some, you know, for / in other places,  where people have done tagging work, they've  01:10:19.620 --> 01:10:26.040 found the auklets are more, that foraging auklets  tend to home in on places more than  01:10:26.040 --> 01:10:30.840 species. So, they will go to a spot because,  you know, and they don't really care what   01:10:30.840 --> 01:10:31.500 they find there. 01:10:31.500 --> 01:10:37.320 They'll just keep going to that spot and so what  we would think is happening is that the auklets,  01:10:37.320 --> 01:10:41.280 you know, auklets are going to their preferred  spots and suddenly the anchovies are gone. And so  01:10:41.280 --> 01:10:47.700 they're just like, Oh, what've we got and they're taking smelt instead. We find all sorts of crazy or  01:10:47.700 --> 01:10:51.480 not crazy, but different  things in auklet bill loads. 01:10:51.480 --> 01:10:56.640 I mean, you find these strange souls that,  know, sometimes, especially in the middle of the  01:10:56.640 --> 01:11:00.060 breeding season, when there are a lot /when the  chicks and, you know, you know, the chicks are  01:11:00.060 --> 01:11:04.260 large and auklets are bringing their food back,  and you'll see an auklet that brings back this  01:11:04.260 --> 01:11:06.960 single, tiny, little worthless  fish and you're like: Come on,   01:11:06.960 --> 01:11:10.080 you know, try a little harder. And then, 01:11:10.080 --> 01:11:13.152 there's some that really bring back  these monstrous bill loads. And,   01:11:13.152 --> 01:11:14.460 I'm like, Oh, somebody's eating well tonight.   01:11:16.140 --> 01:11:19.920 But, the interesting thing, also, is that, you  know, that diet really varies. I mean, you get a  01:11:19.920 --> 01:11:24.300 glimpse of it here at Destruction and Protection.  But if you go up into Canada, for instance,  01:11:25.200 --> 01:11:27.600 there's some really big auklet  colonies in British Columbia. 01:11:28.500 --> 01:11:33.780 There's a place called Triangle Island that's  justly famous for having think it's 40,000 auklet  01:11:33.780 --> 01:11:38.640 pairs. And they're, you know, there the  auklets are eating a lot of Pacific saury,   01:11:38.640 --> 01:11:40.560 which is another type of forage fish. 01:11:40.560 --> 01:11:45.000 That's, you know, it's long and skinny.   01:11:45.840 --> 01:11:49.980 But, yeah, the auklets will  take what the sea gives them. 01:11:49.980 --> 01:11:55.740 And there's some interesting features of their  life history which makes them, which may kind of  01:11:55.740 --> 01:12:03.300 insulate them a little bit from marine conditions  that may hurt other species and that their chicks  01:12:03.300 --> 01:12:09.540 take a long time to grow. And so, perhaps they can withstand or, you know,   01:12:09.540 --> 01:12:15.180 endure periods of lower, you know, it's not like their energetic requirements are   01:12:15.180 --> 01:12:17.040 really, really high because  they need to grow really fast  01:12:17.040 --> 01:12:21.180 like, say, what puffin chicks grow  pretty quickly relative to their size. 01:12:22.020 --> 01:12:27.240 So, a puffin is about a third, again, as big as an  auklets but their chicks develop at about the same  01:12:27.240 --> 01:12:33.300 timeframe. So, that means that the auklet or the  Tufted puffins chick is developing faster. And so,  01:12:33.300 --> 01:12:39.120 auklet can kind of extend that period so that, you  know, things are a little bit lean their chicks  01:12:39.120 --> 01:12:42.600 will spend a little more time in the  burrow before they decide to leave. 01:12:42.600 --> 01:12:45.180 That's a very long answer, to 01:12:45.900 --> 01:12:47.160 What happened to the fish? 01:12:48.480 --> 01:12:50.340 [Chris] Thank you. 01:12:53.280 --> 01:12:58.800 [Gant] This next question comes from Naomi Himley and  she's asking about the bill load again: Are you  01:12:58.800 --> 01:13:02.520 capturing these via mist nets? [Eric] Ah, yes. 01:13:05.760 --> 01:13:06.720 [Grant] The second, [Eric] Go ahead. 01:13:06.720 --> 01:13:12.120 [Grant] the second part of her question talks about  the US Fish and Wildlife Service doing work to  01:13:12.120 --> 01:13:15.060 remove invasive rabbits from Destruction island? 01:13:15.060 --> 01:13:17.940 [Eric] Yes. Those are both good questions. 01:13:18.540 --> 01:13:24.000 So the first one, how we catch the bill loads  or get the bill loads? We use what's called a  01:13:24.000 --> 01:13:30.660 spotlighting method, which is to say that what  we do is we go out into the middle of the colony  01:13:30.660 --> 01:13:35.700 at night when the auklets are coming back and  we have headlamps on and you just kinda sit.   01:13:35.700 --> 01:13:41.160 And, while you're sitting you, just wait, and you  wait for the auklets to come land near you and  01:13:41.160 --> 01:13:45.480 it's really this kind of, you know I know,  it's not pleasant for the auklets. I   01:13:45.480 --> 01:13:48.240 know they hate it. I know, it's like, I feel bad about that. 01:13:49.140 --> 01:13:54.060 You know, it's, you have to be mindful  of how you are stressing an animal.   01:13:54.060 --> 01:13:57.360 But for me, if I separate that, if I'm like, OK,   01:13:57.360 --> 01:14:01.620 I'm sorry, auklets, please  accept my apology. I love  01:14:01.620 --> 01:14:04.740 that kinda, when you hear them coming in it's  like these little helicopters you hear this "rrrrrrrrr" 01:14:04.740 --> 01:14:08.280 Because they're, you know, there are little squat,   01:14:08.280 --> 01:14:10.500 fat, little birds, and so  they have to flap, really  01:14:10.500 --> 01:14:14.160 hard. And as they come into a kind  of break, they, you know, they splay. 01:14:14.700 --> 01:14:17.340 They kind of splay themselves out, you know,   01:14:17.340 --> 01:14:21.360 throw out their feet, they kind of go a little bit vertical, and they kind of stall and they drop. 01:14:22.140 --> 01:14:25.320 And so, if you're lucky,  if you pick a spot, they'll   01:14:25.320 --> 01:14:28.920 drop right in front of you. And then what you do is you turn on your headlamp right away and   01:14:28.920 --> 01:14:31.920 you shine the beam right down on the auklets. And the auklet you know, 01:14:31.920 --> 01:14:38.100 it's obviously not expecting you to see you there,  and usually if all goes well they just spit out  01:14:38.100 --> 01:14:43.620 their bill load and fly away. They just drop  their fishing run. Which is a very logical  01:14:43.620 --> 01:14:47.640 response if you're an auklet. Suddenly you're  caught in this bright beam, and you're like, I'm  01:14:47.640 --> 01:14:50.940 getting the heck out of here. And so then, you know, usually  01:14:50.940 --> 01:14:54.240 there's a, you have a little  baggie and then you kinda pick  01:14:54.240 --> 01:14:58.920 everything up, put it in a baggie, and you mark it  down as a bill load, and so that's how we do it. 01:15:00.420 --> 01:15:05.520 Sometimes there is a little bit of an element of  pursuit where you hear an auklet land near you  01:15:05.520 --> 01:15:10.020 and then, you know, you're kind of thrash over to  see if it's there and it's kind of hunkered down  01:15:10.020 --> 01:15:14.640 hoping that you won't find it. And you feel  bad for your kind of human advantages because I  01:15:14.640 --> 01:15:17.940 have a headlamp, I have opposable thumbs, I'm big. 01:15:17.940 --> 01:15:25.560 And then, you know, it spits out its load and  flies away. A question I often get asked is, you  01:15:25.560 --> 01:15:26.820 know, What does that do for the chicks? 01:15:27.420 --> 01:15:31.380 So the chicks are fed once  a night by both parents.   01:15:31.380 --> 01:15:39.540 So, you know, there the chicks are or  we deprive the chicks of half a half a meal,   01:15:39.540 --> 01:15:40.800 a day for one day.   01:15:41.520 --> 01:15:46.320 We're usually careful to do bill load  sampling in different parts of the colony   01:15:46.320 --> 01:15:48.180 so that you're not sampling twice.  01:15:48.780 --> 01:15:51.780 And we spread it out so that, you know, even if... 01:15:55.020 --> 01:16:00.300 You're not like robbing tons  of auklet chicks of their food.   01:16:00.300 --> 01:16:04.260 And we're also really careful. We have a minimum number that we seek, that we know   01:16:04.260 --> 01:16:08.160 we can use to find out what we need to find out. And we don't go over that number.   01:16:08.700 --> 01:16:14.400 I think we typically try to get 15 bill loads  for a period, and so that's, you know, there 01:16:16.920 --> 01:16:24.840 that so that, it's basically me trying to assure  you that we are, you know, not doing undue harm to  01:16:24.840 --> 01:16:30.240 any chicks and so far as we know, no chick has  died as a result of our work. The question of the  01:16:30.240 --> 01:16:32.400 US. Fish and Wildlife Service  and the rabbits on Destruction Island,   01:16:32.400 --> 01:16:34.740 yeah, I think that work is starting to go forward.   01:16:35.760 --> 01:16:41.940 It's been talked about for years. The rabbits are  a kind of a holdover of the lighthouse, actually,  01:16:42.780 --> 01:16:47.460 that, you know, in the colorful  history of Destruction Island.   01:16:47.460 --> 01:16:50.940 I mean, it's really interesting with Destruction. I'm sure if you've been to Ruby Beach   01:16:50.940 --> 01:16:55.200 or Kalaloch, you can kind of see it out there just sitting on this little slab with   01:16:55.200 --> 01:16:58.680 this tiny little nub that is the  lighthouse. And it's a pretty small island.   01:16:59.400 --> 01:17:06.420 But, you know, lot's been happening there. So they  built that lighthouse there in the late 1800s and  01:17:06.420 --> 01:17:10.560 it was occupied for many years. And you  know, the lighthouse keepers they would   01:17:10.560 --> 01:17:11.280 bring their families. 01:17:11.280 --> 01:17:17.880 And I think all this sort of accounts of what it's  like to live on Destruction, and it sounds really  01:17:17.880 --> 01:17:20.340 awful. But they tried to make it a home. You know,   01:17:20.340 --> 01:17:25.020 they cleared everything off. They even had a little school. People, they had a cow for a while.   01:17:25.020 --> 01:17:27.840 But I think the cow, one of the  cows might have gotten washed away. 01:17:29.100 --> 01:17:31.800 But a lot  of the kids raised rabbits. And   01:17:31.800 --> 01:17:34.260 then the rabbits would escape. So now there are a lot of rabbits everywhere. 01:17:34.920 --> 01:17:43.620 And so the Fish and Wildlife Service with  the WDFW and NOAA are, I think mostly WDFW and  01:17:43.620 --> 01:17:49.560 the Fish and Wildlife Service, are going to try  to get rid of the rabbits using, I think Island 01:17:50.460 --> 01:17:55.680 Conservation, that's the organization they are using, who  are really, really good at clearing islands of  01:17:55.680 --> 01:18:01.320 pests. It will probably be a lethal removal in  that the rabbits will be poisoned in the winter   01:18:02.640 --> 01:18:04.620 when there are no birds there, so, 01:18:06.540 --> 01:18:12.660 that's unfortunate, but I think that work is starting to go forward.   01:18:13.860 --> 01:18:19.620 I mean that it's been approved and may  begin in the next year or two, I believe.   01:18:21.240 --> 01:18:22.320 [Grant] Excellent. Thank you. 01:18:26.280 --> 01:18:33.420 [Chris] I think the last question we had, you so  you answered, indirectly. It was asking   01:18:33.420 --> 01:18:37.440 [Eric] That's how I answer most questions. 01:18:38.100 --> 01:18:46.440 [Chris] Stacey was asking if you, do you give auklets  the fish back or something to compensate for  01:18:46.440 --> 01:18:52.680 taking their food? [Eric] We do not. We  actually use the fish also to look for marine  01:18:52.680 --> 01:18:59.640 contaminants. So when we take the fish, we  measure them, we weigh them. They've done studies  01:18:59.640 --> 01:19:04.800 in the past, that I didn't, I was not a participant in,  where they look at plastic pollution. So they look  01:19:04.800 --> 01:19:10.080 at how much like micro plastics are in the guts of  the fish that might be getting into the auklets. 01:19:10.080 --> 01:19:18.120 And I think all the fish that we've  captured or collected are in a freezer. 01:19:18.120 --> 01:19:21.000 I think at the University of Puget Sound. 01:19:21.000 --> 01:19:26.760 And I think we might do some stuff with fatty acid  work and stable isotopes to see where the fish  01:19:26.760 --> 01:19:31.380 are kind of in the in the, in the  food web, what they're eating.   01:19:32.880 --> 01:19:36.300 How because it's one of those things where I was   01:19:37.020 --> 01:19:41.280 talking with somebody and you know, I like seabirds. I'm a bird guy through and through.   01:19:42.060 --> 01:19:49.320 And but whenever you're talking about birds and  marine conditions, birds in the ocean, how, you  01:19:49.320 --> 01:19:51.960 know, climate change is affecting  birds, you're really talking about fish. 01:19:51.960 --> 01:19:56.640 And somebody said that to me, and I'm like, this  light went off, like, oh, yeah, of course, I mean,  01:19:57.180 --> 01:20:01.800 obviously, you're talking about fish, everything's  about fish. Bird people get kind of annoyed by  01:20:01.800 --> 01:20:04.920 salmon folks, because all salmon people  want to do is talk about fish, but really,   01:20:04.920 --> 01:20:06.720 it often is just all about fish. 01:20:06.720 --> 01:20:13.740 And so, we'll, we're going to be looking at like,  how, you know, what's going on with the fish,  01:20:13.740 --> 01:20:20.340 like as the fish are reacting to changes in  phytoplankton species composition, or zooplankton. 01:20:20.340 --> 01:20:28.740 There's some interesting work coming out about  the northern community of zooplankton. 01:20:28.740 --> 01:20:32.760 There's the sort of northern copepod set,  which is tiny little, basically, fish food,   01:20:33.660 --> 01:20:37.680 which are really nutrient / fatty. Are getting replaced by southern   01:20:38.760 --> 01:20:41.220 copepods species assemblages that are less nutritious. 01:20:41.220 --> 01:20:47.940 And so that is suspected, actually are, I think  they are fairly sure that that's what drove the  01:20:47.940 --> 01:20:50.520 Cassin's auklet die off that I talked about at the beginning,   01:20:50.520 --> 01:20:57.720 was the replacement of these copepods that the Cassin's auklets would normally eat or, you   01:20:57.720 --> 01:21:03.420 know, I said they are fat and rich, went away and they were replaced by these skinny copepods.   01:21:03.420 --> 01:21:06.060 And so, even though the Cassin's auklets were eating a lot, they were eating 01:21:08.040 --> 01:21:12.720 kind of diet copepods, and that wasn't enough.  And so, that was one of the reasons they died. 01:21:14.040 --> 01:21:19.320 [Chris] Let's see. I think there's, we'll go take  one last question if that's OK with you. 01:21:20.040 --> 01:21:29.220 OK, so, this one's a history question from John, today  we have seen no mention of the auklets in the  01:21:29.220 --> 01:21:36.540 Destruction Island log books or from coasties  stories likely that during Coast Guard years,  01:21:36.540 --> 01:21:42.300 human habitat was a deterrent? Competition? [Eric] I don't  know the answer to that. I hadn't heard that.  01:21:42.300 --> 01:21:44.160 That's fascinating. I'll have to look that up. 01:21:48.060 --> 01:21:48.780 I don't know. 01:21:51.000 --> 01:21:54.660 I don't, I don't think, I  don't think they were gone. 01:21:54.660 --> 01:21:58.260 You know, I think there, they were.  Probably there, maybe nobody cares. 01:21:58.260 --> 01:22:02.160 I mean, my big cross to bear is  that nobody cares about Rhino   01:22:02.160 --> 01:22:04.920 auklets because they're not puffins even though they kind of are puffins. 01:22:05.940 --> 01:22:09.480 But it's like that it's kinda drab gray birds that 01:22:09.480 --> 01:22:13.320 only skulk around at night, and I'm like,  they're really cool, trust me, it's like, why? 01:22:13.820 --> 01:22:14.820 Yeah. 01:22:14.820 --> 01:22:24.180 But auklets, that's a great tip, thank you, John. I wanna look that up and see why that, why that   01:22:24.180 --> 01:22:26.520 might be. I mean, there's some interesting things with auklets. 01:22:28.740 --> 01:22:31.860 So, there's some auklet  colonies in California that,   01:22:31.860 --> 01:22:34.080 where they hadn't been for awhile, or they just  01:22:34.080 --> 01:22:38.100 showed up, fairly recently which I  think in the past 15 or 20 years or so. 01:22:38.940 --> 01:22:42.060 But, I haven't heard of that  happening in Washington. 01:22:42.060 --> 01:22:45.060 Right, yeah. I'll look that up.   01:22:46.740 --> 01:22:53.640 [Chris] OK, well, thank you so much. I'll wrap  us up here really quickly. 01:22:53.640 --> 01:22:53.970 [Eric] Sure. 01:22:53.970 --> 01:22:58.020 So thank you very much, Eric, for this  01:22:58.020 --> 01:23:01.380 wonderful presentation. And thank  you everyone that joined us. 01:23:02.220 --> 01:23:11.100 Just wanted to make a little plug for some  upcoming webinars that you're encouraged to join,  01:23:11.100 --> 01:23:17.160 including one that Feiro and Olympic  Coast will be co-hosting in April   01:23:18.060 --> 01:23:21.000 with Anne Shaffer from Coastal Watershed Institute. 01:23:22.140 --> 01:23:27.660 And to let you know that all of you that attended  will get a certificate of attendance. 01:23:27.660 --> 01:23:33.840 So that's worth one credit hour or contact  hour professional development that will   01:23:33.840 --> 01:23:34.680 come via e-mail. 01:23:35.340 --> 01:23:41.820 And then just one last plug to ask you to please  complete the survey. Again, because we are very  01:23:41.820 --> 01:23:47.220 interested in what you have to tell us, especially  about what you want to see in the future as well. 01:23:48.300 --> 01:23:58.020 And yeah, thank you so much. And it will probably  take about 2.5 to 3 weeks for all the closed  01:23:58.020 --> 01:24:01.200 captioning, and so forth,  to be completed. But then   01:24:02.520 --> 01:24:06.840 this webinar will be posted on the National Marine Sanctuaries webinar series site. 01:24:08.520 --> 01:24:09.720 Thank you so much. 01:24:09.720 --> 01:24:14.760 [Grant] Excellent. Thank you, everybody, for  joining in from Feiro. {Eric] Thanks a lot. 01:24:15.600 --> 01:24:16.100 [Chris] Bye.