Mass mortality of short‐tailed shearwaters in the south‐eastern Bering Sea during summer 1997

By Cheryl L. Baduini, K. Hyrenbach, K. Coyle, A. Pinchuk, V. Mendenhall, G. Hunt. 2001

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

During summer 1997, hundreds of thousands of emaciated short-tailed shearwaters (Puffinus tenuirostris) died in the south-eastern Bering Sea. Using strip transect methodology, we documented the distribution and abundance of short-tailed shearwaters during cruises conducted prior to, during, and after the dieoff, as well as the distributions and abundances of floating carcasses. The distributions and abundances of short-tailed shearwaters in 1997 were similar to those found during the 1970s and early 1980s. In August‐ September 1997, we observed 163 floating shearwater carcasses, most of which were between St Paul Island and Nunivak Island. We estimated » 190 000 carcasses were afloat in the study area, about 11% of the surveyed population. Between spring (June) and autumn (August/September), mean net body mass of shearwaters decreased by 19%, mean pectoral muscle mass decreased by 14%, and mean percentage body lipid content decreased by 46%, from 15.6% in spring to 8.4% in autumn. Compared with spring, shorttailed shearwater diets broadened in autumn 1997, to include, in addition to adult euphausiids Thysanoessa raschii, juveniles of T. inermis, T. raschii and T. spinifera, crab megalops, fish and squid. We discuss how the ecosystem anomalies in the south-eastern Bering Sea during spring and summer 1997 relate to the mortality event and suggest possible implications of long-term climate change for populations of apex predators in the south-eastern Bering Sea.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/588a96b5d81e133180d1ff33cc352d7f12b04bad

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Citations in the corpus

Intense stratification leads to phytoplankton nutrient limitation and reduced microzooplankton grazing in the southeastern Bering Sea (2008, unknown): “The 1997 bloom was associated with major ecosystem anomalies on the shelf, including increased abundance of small copepods, altered distribution of euphausiids, and mortality of short-tailed shearwaters (Baduini et al., 2001; Napp and Hunt, 2001; Stockwell et al., 2001).”
Zooplankton species composition, abundance and biomass on the eastern Bering Sea shelf during summer: The potential role of water-column stability and nutrients in structuring the zooplankton community (2008, background): “…by a number of unusual occurrences in recent years, including an intense coccolithophorid bloom (Sukhanova and Flint, 1998; Stockwell et al., 2001), a high mortality of short-tailed shearwaters (Baduini et al., 2001), and Pacific salmon returns far below predicted numbers (Napp and Hunt, 2001).”
Marine Birds and Climate Fluctuation in the North Atlantic (2005, background): “In the southeast Bering Sea, hundreds of thousands of emaciated shorttailed shearwaters died in 1997—a phenomenon quite likely due to long-term climatic changes (Baduini et al. 2001).”
The effects of climate change on the reproduction of coastal invertebrates (2004, background): “These studies have highlighted the fact that marine ecosystem structure and function are intimately linked to forcing from the atmosphere ( Baduini et al. 2001, Napp & Hunt 2001).”
The ecology of rafting in the marine environment. I: The floating substrata (2004, background): “For carcasses of seabirds, Baduini et al. (2001) mention periods at the sea surface of approximately 2 wk. Longevity of skeletal remains of animals depends on an object’s resistance to physical disintegration and its floatability.”
Inter-annual variability in the breeding performance of seabirds in relation to oceanographic anomalies that affect the Crozet and the Kerguelen sectors of the Southern Ocean (2003, background): “In the short term, the foraging success of avian marine predators has been associated with variations in oceanographic conditions (Abrams 1985, Hunt et al. 1992, Veit et al. 1996, 1997, Montevecchi and Myers 1997, Baduini et al. 2001 ), in some cases leading to total breeding failure (Croxall 1992,”