- Welcome to know a life.
My name is Grace Simpkins,
and I'm going to be moderating today's webinar.
This series is sponsored by NOAA's
Regional Collaboration Network,
which is spread across the country
and helps connect people to all that NOA does.
It's also sponsored by Woods Hole Sea Grant, where I work,
located at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
here on Cape Cod.
To find out about future webinars, you can visit our
Woods Hole Sea Grant Education page
or just follow us on Facebook.
This believe it or not, is the 23rd webinar
in the series designed to help you get to know NOAA
and some of our incredible experts
during these months of school closures.
Now, all of our speakers work for some part of NOAA
and that's the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, N-O-A-A.
Now today, I have the pleasure of introducing you
to Jennifer Stock, who works at NOAA's Cordell Bank
National Marine Sanctuary in Alima, California.
Well, we'll be talking about NOAA's role
and studying seabirds and educating people
about the health of the ocean.
We want to recognize that we are all coming to you
from the traditional lands of native communities
who have substantial traditional and local knowledge
and much to share with us.
We acknowledge that Jennifer is coming to us
from the land of the coastal Milwauke
and the Southern Pomo peoples.
We are hosting this webinar from the ancestral lands
of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe
of Gay Head Aquinnah.
A few guidelines for those of you
that haven't been with us before,
you are all muted because we have a lot of people
on the line and we want to hear the speaker.
However, you see your question box.
Some of you have already written where you're from.
Please, continue to write questions
as we go through the talk.
I'll be keeping track of those for Jennifer,
and she will stop every now and then and answer a few.
We may not get to all of your questions but we'll try to get
to as many of them as we possibly can.
So enough of me talking at this point,
I'm going to hand it over to Jennifer
and it will be all yours, Jennifer.
- Great, well good morning everybody, and it's great to hear
where everybody's from around the country.
And I'm really excited to be part of this webinar series.
And today, we're going to talk about Winged Ambassadors,
these animals that are a part of the ocean ecosystem
but they don't live under the ocean.
They live on top of the ocean and soar all around
our world ocean, which is three quarters
of our earth's planet.
And I find them to be fascinating animals.
So we're going to talk a little bit about some of their
amazing adaptations, and then we're going to focus on
what we have as a winged ambassador here in
the North Pacific ocean, the albatrosses,
and tell you a little bit about them.
So we'll have time for questions and I look forward
to sharing this with you.
So just a little bit about me,
I work as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for
the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary in California.
And what that means is I get to teach people about
the ocean through the lens of our National Marine Sanctuary
here off the coast of California.
I started out loving the ocean at a young age.
I grew up on Long Island, New York,
and spent time in the waters of the Long Island Sound
and the Atlantic ocean.
And remember taking long walks on the beaches
and looking at everything that washed up
and noticing the tides and how exciting it was
to find things that were really rare,
and just had a lifelong love
of our coastal ecology early on
and was able to build my career around that.
So as part of my work, I sometimes meet with students,
I teach teachers, I do talks, I do webinars.
And one of the unique things I do is I host a monthly
radio program on a community radio station out here
about the ocean, it's called Ocean Currents.
And so, it's a way to stay engaged with a lot
of different ocean topics.
But one of the things that I really love about my job is
because I get to work with so many different audiences
and sometimes kids is, I get to be a little silly sometimes
and sometimes they get to wear fun hats like that,
teaching about the deep sea.
So it's a pretty exciting job
and I'm really pleased to share some
of the work that we have been doing here
at the sanctuary with you all today.
So you heard about our National Marine Sanctuary System,
a part of NOAA, and this is a map showing where all these
National Marine Sanctuaries are.
And I heard where some of you are from earlier,
and I know some of you have joined since,
and I'm curious if anyone could type in
which National Marine Sanctuary, if you can see on this map,
might you be closest to, if you can't read the sanctuary,
just tell us the state that you're in.
We'd just love to hear where you're all at.
- Okay, great question.
And I have to say, well folks are weighing in
what sanctuary they're closest to.
How excited we are to have Jennifer here talking to us
about the National Marine Sanctuary System.
She's our first sanctuary speaker in the series,
and we've been dying to get someone here,
so we're so excited to have her.
And I see that James says, he's closest
to Stellwagen Bank as is Duncan and Eva.
And also Avery's in Alaska, we have Martha's closest
to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Lisa is close to the,
oh, I went off of it, but she's closest to
the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
We have Kyle near the Flower Garden Banks Sanctuary.
Mabel and Luke are near Mallows Bay.
Annah is near the Monterey Bay and Cordell Bank
so she's in your area.
And Beckett is also closest to the Monterey Bay.
So we've got folks from all over that are really aware
of their sanctuary 'cause they're all giving me
the sanctuary name.
- That's great.
Well, readily nice to hear that.
And also if you'd like, I'd like to encourage you
to check out the other sanctuaries at our website
and that's a link that will be after this talk.
But each one of these has a unique story and unique thing
that they're protecting either an ecosystem
or maritime history and they're all really
exciting places to learn about.
They're like national parks, but a little different
because they're in the ocean and in the Great Lakes.
And for us here in California,
there's a lot of Marine productivity,
a lot of ocean life that we are working to protect
along with Maritime history,
with four national Marine Sanctuaries here in California.
So I'm here at Cornell Bank,
which is just North of San Francisco,
and we are a National Marine Sanctuary
that's entirely off shore
and we have a sister sanctuary right next to us,
the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary,
and just South of us,
the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
So this whole stretch of coast was a place that people
really thought, we really want to protect these places
because they're so valuable to both our livelihoods,
but also to all the animals that live here.
And so we all work together to help protect these places.
Cornell Bank, if you take a look at this map,
there's some really neat features along the sea floor.
So we have this light blue area
and that's a couple hundred feet.
And then there's this round little thumbprint here,
and that's the Cordell Bank,
and a bank is a rocky feature on the sea floor.
Very much like Stellwagen Bank, which I forgot to mention.
Stellwagen Bank and Cordell Bank were both discovered
and mapped by the same person, the same surveyor.
His name was Edward Cordell.
That's a little link we have between our two areas
between Massachusetts and California.
And then we also have the Bodega Canyon,
which you can see right here,
this little wormy place right here
and that's really cool deep sea habitat
and then all these neat features here.
So the diversity of seafloor contours in combination
with a really dynamic ocean system and productivity system
due to a process called upwelling,
those two things combined to make this amazing area
where there's a ton of food in the water
and we call this productivity.
So we have krill on the right there that has this red mass
of animals and those are little tiny uphalluses
which are tiny little shrimp,
and I actually have some here for you.
I'm going to give you a quick close up here.
These are animals that are only about
two centimeters wide,
and you see those little black dots, those are their eyes,
and they need those eyes for seeing down in the deep
'cause they go down deep at night.
But this tiny little food is actually a really important
food resource for a lot of animals,
a lot of whales, a lot of seabirds and fish.
We also, with all that food, have a lot of anchovies,
a type of schooling fish and sardines and squid.
And I love the squid, they're really fun
because they have this great long body here
with lots of little tentacles and this fleshy part here.
And they become a really good food,
especially for the seabirds.
So we have a ton of food in the water here,
which is why animals come from all around
the Pacific ocean to feed here.
We have whales coming up from Costa Rica and Mexico,
we have seabirds traveling from Chile and New Zealand,
and all the way across from the Hawaiian Islands
because the food is so good.
So that is a main reason why we're working
to protect these waters.
So with all that food in the water,
seabirds love Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
These are just a snapshot of some of the birds
that we've seen out there.
And from all the research and studies that we've done,
we've seen 71 different species of seabirds
out in these waters.
Knowing there's about 350 seabird species,
that's quite a bit for one tiny little area of the ocean
so the food is really good.
So it's an area we really want to learn more about
so we can best protect it to help support these animals.
But seabirds are to me, really a fascinating animal
because they travel on top of the water,
and if you've ever been at the ocean on a stormy day,
and it's windy, and it's blustery,
you can't imagine what it's like
to be living on top of the water.
So the adaptations of these animals are pretty awesome,
and we're going to dive into those right now.
So let's talk about what is a seabird?
And think about all the adaptations these animals have
for having a successful life on the ocean.
And adaptation is a body, either a function or a body part
that helps them to be most adapted
to living in their habitat.
And so to do this, I have a volunteer here with me
in the house that is Owen from school as well.
And where you are going to dress him up as a seabird.
So I want to introduce you to Owen.
So Owen, come on over here.
All right.
So I want all of you to think about some...
Here's Owen, hello Owen (laughs)
So I want everybody to think about,
what are things that a seabird might need on their body
to be worth best adapted for living on the ocean?
I'd like you to type those in
and Grace will share those with us.
And I have some prompts here to demonstrate
what that adaptation might be.
And we're going to turn Owen into a seabird.
- Okay great, so I've already got a lot of suggestions
as to what adaptations seabirds have.
So I'm going to share with you that Sloan and Taylor
and a variety of other people have all said feathers,
that sea birds have feathers.
- Yeah, so they have two layers of feathers.
They have a layer of downy feathers close to their skin,
so Owen's going to get a down vest to signify that,
and that's to help keep their skin dry.
They're living on the ocean, they need to stay dry.
They also have outer feathers that are waterproof
and really stiff for being able to soar through the air
as well as sometimes to dive under water.
So he's going to get a yellow rain jacket that's waterproof
to signify those feathers.
So he's got some great feathers here, what else do we have?
- Okay, so Connor, Daniel, Grayson, Michael and Sloan
all say long wings, they have wings.
Jen, a lot of people are saying wings.
- Excellent, they absolutely have wings
and you're going to see later.
Seabirds come in all shapes and sizes, and some have really
long wings and some have really short wings.
So Owen, yeah, you're just going to put these wings out.
Awesome, and those are his wings, his arms.
What else do we have?
- Okay, we have a couple of people, Danny is saying that
they have webbed feet and claws on their feet.
- Absolutely, so they have webbed feet
because they paddle along the surface of the water
and sometimes some birds need those webbed feet
for running along the surface of the ocean
to take flight and go.
So if you can fit that slipper on,
he's got his webbed feet.
Okay, what else do we have?
- Nice, Cameron, Connor, Ellie and a few others
are all saying also that they have beaks.
- Yes, they do have beaks, and those beaks
are really good for two things.
They're really good for smelling
and they're also really good at eating their prey.
So I have a special beef for Owen that we have
and there's a couple other things about the beak
I want to tell you about.
So the beak not only is good at smelling
and tearing apart food that they find,
that's a great beak their buddy,
they also have a salt processing gland in their head
that helps them remove salt from the water.
And I have a salt here to show you what that looks like.
This is an albatross' score.
We're going to be talking a lot about albatross later,
and you can see that hooked beak that it has right there
for tearing apart prey,
but you can also see on the beak there,
those two holes and that's where the salt crystals come out.
The salt gland is in here
and the salt crystals come out there.
So I'm going to give Owen another cup for that.
You've got a salt shaker, that's to remind us
of the salt processing gland.
Okay, what else do we have?
- Okay, I have a few people here saying that
they have a good sense of smell and good eyesight.
- Absolutely a great sense of smell.
They can smell from over 12 miles away,
the albatrosses, so they can really smell their food.
And they also have really good eyesight.
And I've learned that some seabirds
have really good eyesight adapted
for seeing below the water.
And some of them have better eyesight
for seeing just below the surface of the water.
So it depends on the species.
So we have some sunglasses for Owen
to help him see on a sunny day.
Awesome (laughs).
- Nice, some folks are saying that
one of the adaptations is migration.
They're not quite sure what adaptation they have
that allows them to migrate, but they think that
there's something they use to migrate.
- Yeah, so they use their nose to smell,
to help them migrate, but they also use an internal compass
that helps them to sense the earth's magnetic field.
So I have a compass here for Owen,
and they also use the stars,
and they can navigate by the stars.
And so we have a star chart here
to help Owen navigate flying.
So if the ocean is your home,
and the ocean is three quarters of a earth's surface,
that's a lot of navigation to do.
They have an internal GPS to do all that.
And I have one last little prop here
and that is a layer of insulation around their body.
Just a little bit of fat to keep that warmth
and I have a little wetsuit glove here for Owen.
So does this look like a seabird you've ever seen
before on the coast?
Everybody give Owen a round of applause
for being our seabird demonstration (shouts)
- Owen looks like a great seabird.
I have to say if I saw you on the beach Owen,
I would definitely take a picture of you as a sea bird.
- Well thank you Owen for volunteering today
on your school day
and I'm going to continue back with our (mumbles)
And I'll simply as for you what to teach.
- Okay, Jennifer, I just want to mention one other thing
that Tom said that I thought was really great
that we didn't say, but it was worth mentioning.
He mentioned that birds have light bones too.
- Oh, absolutely, yes, they have very light bones
and some of them are kind of hollow
and just have little straps inside for support
and that's to help them be able to fly
really easily and efficiently.
If they had heavy stick bones, it would be really hard to,
and a lot of energy.
Yes, that's a great adaptation to add as well.
So I thought we could take some other questions right now
before we move on.
- Absolutely- we have some great questions
and if you want to minimize your slide
so we can just see you, that would be wonderful.
I've been keeping track of these.
So Wam is one of our regulars and I love this question.
So he asked how did you get your job?
- (clears throat) Well, that's a great question.
So I started out when I was in college.
I knew that I enjoyed teaching about nature
and being outside.
And I was very lucky, I applied to work as a seasonal
national park ranger and I worked
at Assateague Island National Seashore
and Fire Island National Seashore as a ranger.
And I got a lot of experience teaching there
and talking to the public about those places.
And then I went on and also taught
environmental education at a couple schools.
And so I got all this experience,
teaching in different places.
And then when I found out about
the position with the sanctuary, I applied for it
and I had an interview, and eventually I was hired.
It was a great progression for experiences
before landing with NOAA.
- Great, and Connor and Daniel as well as Ellen
are asking, what's your favorite part of your job?
- Oh, that's great.
Well, you know what I really love is being
super engaged with all the science and research
that we're doing in the National Marine Sanctuaries
and in the ocean here.
And it keeps me learning all the time
and that's something that I really value, is that
I'm constantly learning.
And that's something that feeds me every day
and gives me a lot of excitement and energy,
is learning and being able to share
these new learnings with everybody.
So that's the part that I love the most.
- Great, now we have a couple of seabird questions.
So Raven is asking, what's the most common place
where we might find seabirds?
- Well, most seabirds are actually out on the ocean.
So sometimes if you go to the coast,
you might see some birds that are hanging out
on the beach or on the Rocky shores,
and those are shorebirds and they're really fun to watch
and study as well.
Seabirds are away from the coast,
so they are a couple of miles off the coast.
With the exception of gals, and gals come inland.
And so if you live in the Great Lakes area
or anywhere in the middle of the United States,
there are a lot of gals inland as well
because they hang out in your freshwater,
but they also go to near salt water.
So you might see some gals as seabirds as well.
You might live near a bay, and if you live near a bay,
you might see some seabirds.
I've seen seabirds going across the Golden Gate Bridge
and they are hanging out in any open body of water.
- Great, we have a couple of other quick questions.
So Sloan asked,
what shape nest do seabirds make?
Is there a specific shape to their nest?
- Well, it depends on the species.
So some species of seabirds breed on the ice like penguins
and so they just take a little space on the ice
for laying an egg.
Some will actually go onto the rocky cliffs.
Right off shore here, we have the Farallon Islands,
and we have the common murre that breeds
on those islands with these rocky cliffs.
And so they lay an egg that's just tucked in right
in those rocks that they can brood on.
Some of them actually will make a little nest
with some material that's on the ground,
and for the albatrosses, which we're going to be talking
about more later, they make a little divot
in the sand and just bring a little grass around
to signify their nest.
So it really depends on the species,
and there's some that burrow underground
and have their nest underground,
and they're really interesting to learn about too.
- Great, so I'm going to ask you one more question
and then let you go on 'cause I know you have some really
interesting things to show us,
but a lot of our attendees, a lot of the kids
are asking about certain species,
if they're a seabird or not.
So I was hoping you could just tell them
what distinguishes a seabird from the other birds,
what makes something fall in that category.
And also maybe just what the most common
seabird is in your area.
(mumbles)
- Probably the most common would be a gal
because we have a lot of different species of gals
around here in California.
But a seabird is technically defined by an animal
that makes its living from the ocean.
So it eats its food from the ocean.
So that's what makes a seabird a seabird.
And the seabirds we're going to focus on today
are really birds that are offshore,
and we don't really get to see them from the beach.
You have to get on a boat to see them.
So there's really different adaptations about them
and how they navigate the world's ocean.
- Great, I'm going to let you move on,
but I'm just going to prep you that we are going to be
asking you what your favorite seabird is
- Oh, well (mumbles) at the end.
- Or you can tell us now.
- (laughs) My favorite seabird is a albatross,
the black-footed and Laysan albatross are my favorite.
And I'll tell you why?
When I first came to the sanctuary,
I got to go out on a boat off into
the Greater Farallon Sanctuary to learn more about
the offshore ecosystems.
And the naturalist on board who became a friend of mine,
she said, "Oh, you're working at Cornell Bank,
"do you know much about seabirds?"
And at the time I was like, "Oh, a little bit."
And she said, "You're going to learn a lot about seabirds.
"Have you ever seen an albatross?"
And I said, "No."
And she said, "Well look, they're on the horizon."
And there's pretty soon this bird with this lumbering wing
which started coming directly towards us
and I was completely dumbfounded by how amazing
the graceful they were and just wanted to learn
so much more about those birds.
And then, I have since read books about them
and learn more about how they have such amazing lifestyle.
So they're my favorites and they're also some of the hardest
to see and I think that's something I like in general,
are things that are hard to see
because I like to share them with people
and help people see the things that are not easy
to see through education.
So awesome questions.
I can't wait to hear some more of these.
Let's move along to a little bit more about seabirds.
So I wanted to just back up with another picture,
which were talking about the salt glands.
And this is in the group of seabirds,
the tube-nosed birds and you can tell by their bill,
this is a tube-nosed bird, it has like a tube down its bill.
And you can see on top of the bird, on top here,
this is a northern fulmar.
It has a little area here and that's where
the salt crystals come out.
The gland is here in their brain,
and then on the albatrosses here as well.
But it's really interesting to see how it works.
It's here in the brain and it extracts the salt crystals
and they come out here this way.
And sometimes, you might see seabirds or gals
shaking their head like this,
and it might be to release some of the salt crystals
out of those nostrils.
So that's just a really cool thing I wanted to show you
before we moved on.
So the other neat thing about seabirds,
they spend their entire lives at sea except
when they come to land to do one thing.
And you have four choices here.
I want you to type in what you think
seabirds come to land to do.
They either rest, eat, reproduce or sleep, which one?
- All right, great question.
And I think I warned you that we have a very savvy crew
that joins us so I have to say that
the overwhelming majority,
Michael, Juliana, Ellie, Dawn and Bridget,
everyone is saying C, reproduce.
- Good job you guys, you're right.
They come to land to reproduce because birds can't lay
an egg on the ocean, it would fall.
They need it to be on land.
So all around the world, ocean seabirds find colonies
where they can lay their eggs.
Right here is a brown booby
that's sitting on an egg right there.
And some of them are closer to shore,
some of them are farther away
on remote islands to reproduce.
So another thing about seabirds, one of the adaptations
I heard someone say is they have wings,
they have long wings, and some seabirds have long wings.
The wandering albatross has a wing stand of 12 feet,
which is probably bigger than my car.
I have a Subaru, which is amazing.
And then if you look at this picture here,
there's different colors of birds
with different sized wings.
We have seabirds that are everywhere in between
and all the way down to just like 12 inches across.
And so the wing's fan is a big part of determining
how you use the ocean.
Are you a wandering animal that wanders across
the entire ocean or are you an animal that stays local
and does a lot of quick movements
and can dive under the water.
Some seabirds actually feed by diving under the water.
And so you need some shorter wings for that.
It'd be a little hard with your long wings
to swim under the water.
So that's one of the neat things I like to pay attention to
when looking at seabirds, is watching their wings,
and the short winged birds are usually a family
of birds called the alcids.
And those are the birds that are divers,
they dive under the water.
And then the mid birds are petrels as well as shearwaters.
And then the albatrosses are those grand birds
with the big wingspan, like the red there
in this illustration.
So it's all about your wing and your wing tells you
how you're going to use the ocean.
So I want to move to ambassador species here
in the North Pacific.
We call them an ambassador because they have a lot
of stories to tell, these are predators.
All seabirds are predators of the prey in the ocean.
And what happens to them is very indicative
of the health of the ocean for all animals
that live in the ocean.
And so seabirds are truly ambassadors for us learning
about the ocean's health.
So on the left, we have the Laysan albatross or molly,
and then the black-footed albatross, the Kahuku,
and those are the native Hawaiian names.
These are birds that breed
in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.
So here's a map showing where those are.
Some of you might be familiar with the main
Hawaiian Islands here at Hawaii and Maui and Wahoo,
but further on, Northwest of there is this string
of islands and ashfalls that are just
a couple of feet above sea level.
They're ancient coral reefs that have built up
and become islands, and they are a breeding site
for many types of seabirds, also sea turtles and monk seals
and it's a really special area
for a lot of different Marine life.
This area is also protected by NOAA
as the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
We're going to quiz you on how to say that later.
And that is a partnership with the state of Hawaii
as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA,
and they work together to help protect these places.
So these seabirds, the albatrosses breed out here
and some of them breed way out here
in Kure Atoll and Midway Atoll.
And someday I'd love to be able to visit there,
but it's very hard to get there.
You have to be a biologist and be willing to spend
a lot of time in remote areas
under really harsh conditions.
So they come to these islands
and they are in dense colonies.
So this is Midway Island and you can see there's some
human history on this Island.
There was a battle of Midway out there.
And so there was some remnants from some
of the early military activity.
And the albatrosses don't care.
This is a special place for them.
They nest in these big, big colonies.
And they have a lifelong pair bonds.
These birds take a couple of years
but they flirt with each other and they find their mate,
and it's a lifelong pair bond if both birds can survive.
These are black-footed albatross courting each other,
and this is a Laysan albatross courting each other.
And they have really fun dances and sounds to make
when they're doing this,
and we have a little video to show you
and you want to have your volume up for this.
So I think Grace is going to run that video for us.
[rhythmic music]
Awesome, thank you for showing that video.
They are so much fun to watch with the bill clacking
and the dancing and the wing movement,
and they're just so much fun.
And so they'll do that until they find their mate
and then they lay an egg after mating
and that egg is as big as a soda can.
It's pretty big.
And so having an egg that big takes a lot of energy.
And so the parents take turns,
what we call brooding, where they sit on that egg
until it hatches.
And then when it hatches out,
you have a little baby albatross with these beautiful
little downy feathers that they eventually will have
replaced by adult feathers as they grow.
So once you have that chick, there is a bit of work to do
to feed that chick so that it can grow
and get the energy it needs to become an adult albatross
and take off and live on the ocean.
So the parents at the beginning take turns one at a time,
heading out to sea to find food.
And it's incredible how far they go.
They go really far away from the Hawaiian islands
to get food.
But you heard earlier that Cornell Bank has a lot of food,
and so some of them come all the way here to California
to get food and then come back to their chicks.
So then when they come back to their chicks,
the parent here looks to the chick
and the chick tacks out it's bill like, feed me, feed me.
And I don't want you to try this at home
but the adult albatross will regurgitate
everything that it ate into that chick.
And if you think about it, that's a lot of pressure
to just line up just right.
You can see how awkward it is with these bills to line up.
And that bird's been gone for two weeks
and it has all this food and makes the slurry oily mixture.
And if the bird misses,
then that chick misses all those nutrients.
So it's very intricate process that they've perfected
over time in their adaptations.
I thought you might have some questions here,
so we're going to take a quick break for questions
before we move on.
- Okay great, I've been keeping track of all the questions
and we've got a few.
So Beckett's wondering, how do seabirds protect
their eyes when they dive?
- That's a good question.
I'm not a hundred percent sure myself.
I know some birds have a membrane that folds down
over their eye to protect their eyes diving underwater,
I'm not sure.
Albatrosses spend most of the time on top of the water
and they'll put their heads under water
and maybe dip down a little bit.
So I don't know if they have a membrane or not.
That's something good to look up to find out.
But some birds do have that.
They have a whole membrane that closes over their eyes,
so that will be good to find out.
- Great, Daniel's wondering at what age
they start migrating or flying further distances.
- Well, from the very first age.
First time, they fly off their islands
that they were born on, they take off for the open ocean.
and they might be gone for a couple of years
before they come back to start breeding.
I think that albatrosses start breeding around age six.
So they might be gone a couple of years,
but they always come back to the islands.
that they were born on and to the general colony area
that they were born in.
So they have an amazing ability to navigate
the world ocean to find their way home.
- Now here's an interesting question from Don.
How do the seabirds know if the chick is theirs when
they come back and there're all these chicks on the beach?
- Well, I think it's predominantly about sound
and the chicks and the parents start communicating
right away as soon as that chick is hatched out.
And so predominantly by sound.
And also the parent has the navigation to come right back
to the same colony.
There might be some other factors involved there as well
and some of them might be mysteries
and I'm sure there could be some mistakes along the way,
but based on survival and adaptations,
it's best for the communication for that parent
to come back to their chicks.
So that's the predominant communication.
I think it's predominantly sound,
but that's another good thing to look up.
Are there other ways that that chicken parent
get aligned back together?
But I'm pretty pretty sure it sounds
- Great, and there are a lot of people,
I was going to hold this question
but a lot of people are asking it.
Nate's asking it and Garvey's asking it,
how long does an albatross live?
What's the average lifespan?
- Well, we don't know the average life span,
but one thing we are learning is through banding studies.
And I was going to save this for the very end,
but I'll introduce it now.
We know that oldest albatross alive is 69 years old
and it's a Laysan albatross and we know that
through banding, which is putting an aluminum band
around their foot.
You can see right here, there's that beautiful web foot,
but they put a little band here.
This one might be banded here, I can't tell.
And then when they come back,
the biologists on the Island will go to see
which birds are back and then they can track this over time.
So one bird has been tracked at coming back,
has been tracked since she was a baby
and she is 69 years old and her name is Wisdom.
She is a famous albatross.
She even has her own Facebook page
and she is an amazing bird that has lived 69 years,
and get this, she is a female and she is still laying eggs
but she's probably getting ready to say goodbye to her chick
for the year out on midway Island right now.
So we know that albatrosses live
at least 69 years old, maybe longer.
Smaller seabirds, they don't live as long,
but these bigger birds have a longer life span.
- Great, I'm going to ask you one more question
before I let you move on.
And that is a really interesting question
that came in from Dylan.
How do they sleep?
So I think he's asking when they're out at sea
and they're spending so much time,
how and where do they sleep?
- Well, they have the ability to rest part of their brain,
like Marine mammals do and they can just keep flying.
And they're able to rest part of their brain while flying.
So they sleep while they're flying.
The actual mechanics of that, I'm not too sure,
but I do know that they can rest their brain
and somewhat turn it off and go on autopilot
for a while while they're soaring across the ocean.
- Great, I know you have a lot of really fun stuff
to continue to show us.
I'm going to let you go on Jennifer,
but I'll track the questions.
- I love these great questions and you know what?
Questions are awesome and the internet can really help.
So now that you have these questions about these birds,
it'll be really fun for you to do some research
to learn more about these amazing birds.
So when those albatrosses head out to sea,
they're looking for food.
And this is a typical albatross food chain
and it all starts with microscopic plants,
these phytoplankton, and these phytoplankton are in areas
where there's a lot of cool oceanographic processes
called upwelling, which is where nutrients come up
to the surface and really fertilize the food web.
And so they become phytoplankton,
take all those nutrients and grow.
And then when you have all these phytoplankton,
all the zooplankton, which are animals,
tiny little microscopic animal plankton,
and they just float along,
those also will explore the population
because they like to eat the phytoplankton.
And then it goes on and on up the food web,
small fish and many different animals feed on that
zooplankton and then squid feed on those small fish.
And then wherever you have squid,
you have seabirds like albatrosses.
So the albatrosses are heading to areas in the ocean
that have a lot of this idle plankton
because they know that's where they're going to
get the food that they want.
And so where do they go then?
Well, here's the map that this was produced
by a group of researchers,
a group called Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge.
They're based in Hawaii and they work with scientists
at Hawaii Pacific University
and the United States Geological Survey and other partners,
to do a study to learn about, where the birds go.
And it's hard, you can't really have a boat on the ocean
following an albatross.
So they actually do this with telemetry
and they put a tag on the bird and then they can study
the data points that come in.
I'm going to show you that in a second.
But this is a map showing some of the areas
that albatrosses will visit and when they're being tagged
from their breeding sites, so Kure Atoll here
in Turner Island, that's where they're breeding.
This means they're coming back,
they're going out to sea and they're coming back
because they have a chick there.
And so those show you some of the incredible migrations,
well not really migrations but some of
the feeding (mumbles) they will do to feed their chick.
So here at Turner Island,
there are a couple of birds that flew all the way
across the Pacific ocean about 2,500 miles to Cordell Banks
to get squid and then fly back.
So that's like 5,000 miles round trip.
That's like going across the United States twice
and they'll do that in about two weeks.
So this is pretty amazing that we have the science
that can show us where these birds are going
so we can learn more about what activities are happening
in the waters that these birds are going to.
So this is how we know.
Through science, scientists are able to use
the satellite tracking with the satellite tag.
It's a very light tag.
They just tape it onto the outer feathers of the bird,
and the bird doesn't even know it's there
and that little satellite tip here
sends a signal to a satellite,
which then sends a signal to our computer
and then we're able to start making maps
of where these animals go.
There are also satellite tags that are put on Marine mammals
like whales or dolphins, and all whales and dolphins
eventually come up to the surface to breathe air.
And so when it does, it can send a ping to the satellite.
It has to transmit through air to send a location.
So this is a really fascinating way to study the ocean,
is by using these transmitters.
I'm imagining you might have some questions about this.
So we'll take a quick pause for some questions.
- So we have an interesting question from Sloan
who must've seen one of our previous webinars
we had on saildrones.
So Sloan is wondering if you can use a saildrone
or a drone to study seabirds.
- I don't know.
Maybe with cameras, but one of the things that is hard
about seabirds is they move really fast.
Albatrosses can travel up to 80 miles an hour
when they're crossing the ocean.
So a saildrone might, unless it was following along it,
that would be pretty tough.
But there might be ways if there were
different telemetries attachments
to that saildrone that could track,
maybe find still movements every day throughout the day.
Like how close albatross is.
I think saildrones have been predominantly
for ocean conditions and air conditions out at sea
but I don't know about animals.
So it's tough.
They're moving pretty quickly
and they're going pretty far distances.
So I think you have to have a bigger picture
for tracking them across the ocean.
- Great, I love it when we get those questions
that cross webinars when kids are making connections.
So Duncan asks, do the tags affect the birds?
And Connor and Daniel are also wondering,
then how long the tags last?
- Absolutely, so one of the neat things about science is
they test these things to make sure that
they're going to have as little to no impact on the animal
'cause otherwise they're not going to be learning that much
if they're impacting animal.
They want the animal to be living its natural life
and these tags to somewhat be like
a little spy on their back.
And so they're super, super light and they've been shown
to show no impact on the birds' lifestyle
in terms of flying or feeding.
And birds have feathers and feathers eventually get degraded
and old and they will moult feathers,
which means they release some feathers a couple at a time
and eventually are replaced by newer ones.
So that tag will fall off at some point.
Most of these tags are designed to go
for about 85 to 90 days and then they fall off.
And it might sound sad in the sense that
it's going to fall into the ocean,
but the amount of information that we learn about
these birds and how that's helpful for helping conserve them
is a far greater benefit than losing the tag to the ocean.
I know that's a concern of a lot of people
and it is for me too but we have to think about the science
and how much more we can learn by doing studies like this.
Some tags can be taken right off if a bird is coming
right back to its nesting site, they can take the tag off.
Some of the other animals, they can retrieve the tag
from some tags on some other animals are designed
to pop off at a certain time, and then the researcher has
to go to the area and collect the tag.
So it's interesting and amazing technology
for learning about the ocean.
- Great, we have another interesting question
and that's, how do you catch the birds
to put the tags on them?
- Well, when they're at the breeding sites,
the albatrosses, they call them gooney birds
because they're not so great on land,
but they are well designed for life on the ocean.
And so when they're on lands,
they try to approach them very carefully
without disturbing them too much
and they'll grab them from behind
and hold the wings down.
And usually they'll put something on its eyes
to calm the bird so it doesn't get overly stimulated
with the visual cues of what's happening.
When they tag out at sea, so years ago the scientists
with Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, they came and tagged
birds at Cornell Bank National Marine Sanctuary,
and they had to attract the bird.
They got a permit to do this, attract the bird with squid
and bring that bird really close to the boat.
And then they would use a giant net to scoop the bird up,
and again, hold it close, calm it, take that tag on,
and then they'd let it go.
So that's the process of how they tag them.
- Great, there are a few more questions
but I'm going to let you go on 'cause I want to hear,
I know you have some more interesting things
to share with us so carry on.
- All right, let's keep going.
(clears throat)
So after the parents have come,
they regurgitated the chicks a couple of times,
and they've brought them this slurry of squid oil
from the squid they've eaten.
But squid have one hard part on their body.
They're predominantly a soft-bodied animal,
but there's one hard part on their body and that's the beak.
And the beak is made out of the same material
our fingernails are made out of, and so it doesn't digest.
So the bird gets filled up with these squid beaks.
They also get filled up with other things like seeds
or little pieces of wood or feathers that they might
have been picking at around their nests.
But also are showing that they are getting filled up also
with human trash and plastic.
And that's telling us that the parents are eating
plastic out at sea and feeding it to the chicks,
and that's a real concern.
And the way we know this is that
the chicks will regurgitate, they throw up.
There's a lot of throwing up with seabirds.
It's not the most glamorous science to study
'cause there's so much throwing up,
but they will regurgitate what we call a bolus
and this is stuff that they can't digest.
So like an owl regurgitates a pellet of fur and bones,
an albatross and some other seabirds regurgitate
the stuff that they can't digest.
And so this is a pile of evidence of data to study,
to understand what these birds are eating out at sea,
and what they're being fed.
And the biologists that are on the islands are seeing trash
in every single bolus of these birds.
And so that is a real concern.
Like I was saying, a winged ambassador, they're telling us
concerns of what's happening on the ocean
and this is definitely one of them, they are eating plastic.
So this is basically a record of the chicks diet.
And scientists will actually study that in the lab.
They will weigh how many squid beaks and how many pieces
of plastic so they can quantify how much,
what percentage of prey was plastic
and what percentage was natural.
Here's a picture of a bolus that's been regurgitated
by a chick that's been picked apart and spread out
so you can see it really well.
And this specific bolus has quite a few pieces
of large trash, large pieces of plastic in it.
You might see a reflector here, I see a pen cap here,
and this looks like a wheel from a toy.
And then you have some other things that are hard
to describe because they're just pieces and fragments.
Plastic degrades out in the sun and the salt,
and it just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces,
all the way to microscopic pieces,
which means it still exists that's just microscopic.
But the birds they think might be picking
at this plastic and eating it
because it might smell like prey to them.
Everything floating in the ocean can start to pick up
plankton like diatoms, and diatoms are a type
of phytoplankton and they'll attach themselves
to that plastic and that puts off a smell
that the birds might want to then eat.
So they might eat by accident.
The other thing is that when we have things floating
in the ocean that they call it flotsam, there are fish eggs
and all of interesting critters that attach
to a flotsam as part of their ecosystem.
And so there might be fish eggs and things attached
to these pieces of plastic that
the albatrosses are going after.
Either way, we just know it's a problem and it's really sad
to see these beautiful birds being impacted by this plastic.
So where does it all come from?
And this is the part where we really have an opportunity
to help support improving the health of the Ocean
and helping seabirds because it all comes from land.
So we have the ocean that takes up three quarters
of the earth surface and the rest of it land,
and the ocean is downstream from everywhere
all around the planet.
And so when there's plastic or trash on the ground
that's not picked up and disposed off,
eventually it will make it down to a creek or a stream
or a storm drain or a river, and then out to the ocean,
and then the ocean carries it along the currents,
and in some areas, it congregates really densely.
There's certain gyres in the ocean that spin
and concentrate things in the middle.
And we're finding that trash is growing in the ocean,
and plastic is growing in the ocean,
and the seabirds are telling us, this is not good,
this is not a good thing,
but this is a really amazing opportunity
for all of us to figure out solutions.
And there are so many people working on,
how do we cut this, and I know that you all probably
have a ton of ideas about, how can we prevent this?
How can we prevent this trash getting into the ocean?
And I want to hear your ideas.
This is an opportunity to type in what are your ideas
for how do we prevent trash and plastic
from making it to the ocean?
- Okay, like I said, we have a pretty savvy group here.
So what are your ideas for how we can prevent
these plastics and this trash from getting into the ocean?
Dylan says we should recycle.
I see someone says to reuse,
Kyle says, beach cleanups.
Rebecca says, spread the word.
Duncan says, recycle more.
Duncan also says to compost.
Rebecca says, if we pick up our trash,
Chris is saying the same thing.
So sometimes if you do it safely with an adult,
you might be able to go out and do like a beach cleanup
or clean up your neighborhood.
Ellie says you can even make a sign for the beach.
Lisa says you can clean up in your neighborhood
because if you live near the ocean,
your trash might end up in the ocean.
And Tom suggests going on trash walks.
So I think we've gotten a lot of great ideas.
- Those are great ideas and those are all things
that every single one of you can be part of,
especially if you do it with a lot of other people.
So getting your friends together,
getting your school together,
getting your whole community together to be part
of those actions is much more effective
than just one person.
So those are great and definitely get your friends engaged.
A couple of things that we do in our family,
I've been trying to figure out ways cut out plastic
'cause it's pretty hard.
But one of the things I have is this little kit
of service ware.
So if I happen to be out and about and needing a fork,
I got my fork, I got chopsticks, I even have a straw.
And at first it was like I would forget it,
but now it's just a habit,
and this is what I have and I had never had
to pick up any utensils out and about.
The other thing is of course using reusable bags.
I know right now we're in a really weird time
and this is not being encouraged,
but this is another great thing we can use
to prevent single use plastic bags.
Also our water bottles and coffee cups, things like that,
they really add up if we're able to reduce those things
by having our own that is a huge thing.
And not only that you are being an example
to everybody else that this is important to do.
And that's something I noticed when I'm doing it,
I feel really good that I'm showing this as an example.
This is what we should be doing.
The other thing is getting people involved in helping
to make change at the larger level,
and writing letters to our communities
as well as our legislators and the government about,
we need to find solutions for preventing plastic pollution,
and creating things that are reusable
and recyclable much more easier.
So it takes multiple actions.
You guys are on the right track,
and I hope that these are all things you do.
And I want to encourage specifically
to be really safe about it.
Being really safe when you're picking up trash,
especially right now since we're in such a bizarre time.
But these are all great things we can do on land
to help protect seabirds, but also other types
of animals in the ocean from everything,
from the tiny microscopic plankton to the great whales,
keeping plastic and trash out of the ocean is one
of the number one things every single one of you
can be part of that solution on.
Now I want to end with just another story.
We talked about Wisdom a little bit earlier,
but I want to just end with her because we're hearing
about these challenges that we're having.
Wisdom the albatross, she is a survivor,
and she is 69 years old as you heard,
and she is still coming back to Midway Islands
and breeding and laying eggs with her mates.
And she did breed this year and it's May,
so her chicks probably getting ready to sail
and become an adult albatross.
And if you think about some of the challenges
we have on the ocean right now,
she's made it through with all these things.
And so there's some incredible adaptations
she had that she's passing on to her young
as she makes chicks,
and so she's truly a symbol of hope and resilience.
And again as an ambassador,
we can be helping to support that.
She sends us a message to you helping to help keep
plastic out of the ocean, and I hope that you'll consider
what things you can do from here on out to help
Wisdom and all her family members out on the ocean.
I want to share one little story
as I'm wearing my albatross bands here.
Well, let's see.
Do this, right here.
This is my albatross band
and it was actually a gift from my husband
because he knows I love albatrosses,
but banding is a big part of the story
for helping protect albatrosses and learn about them.
And so this was a fundraiser for a group
that is helping to support the funding for banding
and learning about birds like Wisdom.
And I always wear this as a remembrance to remember
that we can do hard things and we can help do better
by continuing to help protect animals and learn about them.
And it helps me remember to keep sharing that story as well.
But I want to just take this opportunity
to answer any last questions that you might have.
And thank you so much for your really good questions,
and I want to encourage you to please spend some time
learning more about seabirds in your area
and also learning about Wisdom.
She has a Facebook page and she's an amazing animal.
- Great, well we do have a few questions.
So we have a few questions that I'm going to ask
what I think is a really fun one.
Taylor asks, what's the weirdest thing
you have learned while studying seabirds?
- (laughs) What's the weirdest thing?
Well, I think the regurgitation is kind of weird.
It's a cool adaptation and that's what I love about that.
There's so many fascinating things about seabirds
and the fact that they regurgitate to their chicks is weird.
I also think that the treasure trove of information
that they have in their boluses is really neat.
because there's so much we can learn about
the health of the ocean by studying the diet.
And they are giving us a perfect data sample
to be able to learn about.
So a little weird but kind of cool.
- So I'm glad you mentioned that.
And I just want to also highlight the fact that
if you go to the NOAA Live website,
we have a virtual bolus dissection activity there
that you can do.
If anyone wants to email me,
again, I'm one of your moderators.
I'm Grace Simpkins, I also have an activity on
how you can make your own bolus and then dissect it.
So if you are interested in learning more about the bolus,
I encourage you to do that.
Unfortunately, we're out of time because there are some
really great questions that are still coming in.
But what I want to do is I want to highlight a few
of this things that Jennifer talked on.
She talked about the National Monument in Hawaii,
we are going to Hawaii next week with our NOAA Live series
so we'll be hearing someone from the monument
talking to us on Monday.
She also mentioned using satellite technology
one of our early talks with Kyle Wilson
was about satellite technology,
you can take a look at that webinar.
She also, I'm trying to think talked about...
we talked about the saildrone.
Someone asked a saildrone question.
So you can look through some of our previous webinars
if something Jennifer said piqued your interest
and the video that she played that showed the clacking
and the dancing, which was really fun,
is also on the website if you want to take
a look at it and see it.
It's a little bit longer, you can see it in its entirety.
But we want to thank you all for coming to the webinar.
Thank you, Jennifer.
It was so amazing.
I studied seabirds in grad school,
so I have to say that I was very excited
to have our seabird expert on our series.
So thank you so much for sharing your expertise.
On Friday, we're going to hear all about tornadoes.
So I encourage you to tune in
if you want to learn more about tornadoes.
And yeah, just really excited.
Have a great day.
We'll see you Friday and thanks for all your help
and your assistance, Jennifer.
- No problem, thanks everybody.
Keep learning, take care.
- See you.