Starving seabirds on Alaska coast show climate change peril
WASHINGTON (AP) Dead and dying seabirds collected on the coasts of the northern Bering and southern Chukchi seas over the past six years reveal how the Arctic's fast-changing climate is threatening the ecosystems and people who live there, according to a report released Tuesday by U.S. scientists.
Local communities have reported numerous emaciated bodies of seabirds including shearwaters, auklets and murres that usually eat plankton, krill or fish, but appear to have had difficulty finding sufficient food. The hundreds of distressed and dead birds are only a fraction of ones that starved, scientists say.
Since 2017, weve had multi-species seabird die-offs in the Bering Strait region, said Gay Sheffield, a biologist at University of Alaska Fairbanks, based in Nome, Alaska and a co-author of the report. The one commonality is emaciation, or starvation.
The seabirds are struggling because of climate-linked ecosystem shifts which can affect the supply and the timing of available food as well as a harmful algal bloom and a viral outbreak in the region, she said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/starving-seabirds-alaska-coast-show-160435742.html