Seabird

The history of America at sea is presented through the travels of Seabird, a carved ivory gull.

Life itself could never have been sustainable without seabirds. As Adam Nicolson writes: "They are bringers of fertility, the deliverers of life from ocean to land." A global tragedy is unfolding. Even as we are coming to understand them, the number of seabirds on our planet is in freefall, dropping by nearly 70% in the last sixty years, a billion fewer now than there were in 1950. Of the ten birds in this book, seven are in decline, at least in part of their range. Extinction stalks the ocean and there is a danger that the grand cry of the seabird colony, rolling around the bays and headlands of high latitudes, will this century become little but a memory. Seabirds have always entranced the human imagination and NYT best-selling author Adam Nicolson has been in love with them all his life: for their mastery of wind and ocean, their aerial beauty and the unmatched wildness of the coasts and islands where every summer they return to breed. The seabird’s cry comes from an elemental layer in the story of the world. Over the last couple of decades, modern science has begun to understand their epic voyages, their astonishing abilities to navigate for tens of thousands of miles on featureless seas, their ability to smell their way towards fish and home. Only the poets in the past would have thought of seabirds as creatures riding the ripples and currents of the entire planet, but that is what the scientists are seeing now today.

This is the definitive book on the seabirds of the world, describing virtually all the known species. Illustrated in color.

In the last few years there has been an excltmg upsurge in seabird research. There are several reasons for this. Man's increased ex ploitation of natural resources has led to a greater awareness of the potential conflicts with seabirds, and of the use of seabirds to indicate the damage we might be doing to our environment. Many seabird populations have increased dramatically in numbers and so seem more likely to conflict with man, for example through competition for food or transmission of diseases. Oil exploration and production has resulted in major studies of seabird distributions and ecology in relation to oil pollution. The possibility that seabirds may provide information on fish stock biology is now being critically investigated. Some seabird species have suffered serious declines in numbers and require conservation action to be taken to reduce the chances that they will become extinct. This requires an understanding of the factors determining their population size and dynamics.

Internationally important seabird resources are found in the Nordic countries (Greenland, Faeroes, Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Svalbard). To fulfill a recommendation of the Arctic Nordic Action Plan 1999, a project was carried out to harmonize databases for seabird colonies. Number of seabird species in these countries is 30, the number of colony sites may be 10,000, often more than one species at same site, and the total breeding pairs is estimated c. 50 million. A harmonized database format for seabird colonies was established, with 3 main tables, colony descriptions, colony survey data, study plot information. Linked are tables with references, observers, and photo documentation. The program can be downloaded free from: ftp://ftp.npolar.no/Out/Hallvard/. The manual is in the report appendix. The format harmonization is the first step in work on seabird colony databases. Harmonization enables common analyses over larger regions than hitherto possible, e.g. scientific assessments of species (colony details, geographic location, colony size, trend data, etc.) and conservation status overviews. Seabird colony data need to be incorporated into conservation policies. The databases are only as good as the data stored, many colonies remain unregistered, not censused, and fieldwork needs to be intensified. Each country maintains, updates, and corrects their databases, adding details lacking (habitat type, colony distribution, conservation status, land ownership, etc.).

Seabirds are global travellers connecting oceans and seas all over the world, and facing multiple threats at local and global scales. Seabirds are long-lived top predators, reflecting changes at lower trophic levels, and are good models to assess ecological changes produced by human societies. Thus, world-wide collaborations are needed to understand seabird ecology and to develop effective conservation measures benefitting both humans and seabird populations. This book provides a modern overview on seabird biodiversity studies: it begins by covering the most up-to-date techniques to study seabirds, and then focus on pragmatic issues related with interactions between seabirds and humans, the use of seabirds as ecological indicators and conservation of seabirds. It gives an updated insight on all these topics and highlights gaps that need further development for a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between seabirds and human actions. This book covers the response of the seabird research community to a biodiversity crisis aiming to contribute towards environmental sustainability. It should provide inspiration to a wide range of professionals and students, including the much needed world-wide collaboration between research groups and practitioners. In this way seabird research and conservation provide an inspiration for the solution of global issues such as climate change.