It Takes a Colony to Raise One Young

08/28/2009

Seattle, Wash., Aug. 27, 2009 -- What seems like a long,long time ago,black guillemots on Cooper Island had the best of all possible worlds. The summer snow-free period was increasing annually, providing breeding birds with more time to raise their young, and the Arctic pack ice was close enough offshore that there was a readily accessible supply of Arctic cod to feed the nestlings. The only real dark cloud on the horizon was the realization, slow in coming over the past three decades, that the warming planet that had given the guillemots their "salad days" in the 1970s and 1980s could cause increasing melt of the pack ice, making Arctic cod less accessible and causing problems for parent guillemots provisioning their young in August and early September.



Even as the ice kept retreating during the 1990s there were reasons to think the guillemots could cope with the change in prey type and availability since even though this subspecies has specialized on prey associated with Arctic pack ice, the genus to which it belongs, Cepphus, is highly adaptable and lives on a wide variety of nearshore prey in temperate and subarctic waters. It appeared that documenting how the Cooper Island guillemot population, with its many color-banded individuals, responded to an ice-free nestling period was going to be a rare chance to watch adaptation and selection in a wild population.

But this past summer suggests that the geographic shift in the guillemots’ prey may not be the deciding factor in the future of the colony, but the shift in two species that were uncommon in the area when the study began: the horned puffin and polar bear. The preliminary results from this summer show that hatching success (the number of eggs that hatched) was reasonably high at about 70 percent -- but could have been over 80 percent had eggs not been displaced and broken by horned puffins pushing the eggs out of nest depressions and polar bears breaking the eggs by moving nest sites. Still, with over 180 guillemot chicks in nests in late July and early August, there was a good chance the colony could produce a sizeable number of fledglings this year.



However,as August progressed the activities of puffins changed and visits by bears increased so that the number of guillemot chicks rapidly decreased to 100, and then to four chicks on August 16. While a few chicks died from lack of food or natural causes, the vast majority were the victims of puffins prospecting nest cavities and polar bears looking for food, with puffins killing (but not eating) about 80 chicks and polar bears killing (and sometimes eating) about 90. It is telling that the polar bear, an Arctic species forced south because of melting ice, and the horned puffin, a subarctic species moving north because of melting ice, could together cause the major breeding failure guillemots experienced this summer. While either species could have, by itself, greatly deceased breeding success, the combination proved devastating to the Cooper Island colony in 2009. A number of guillemot nests with two nestlings had young lost to both bears and puffins.

When I left the island late on August 17, one young guillemot had just fledged and there were three young still in nest sites, each with about two weeks to go before nest departure. It is likely that polar bear visits increased in frequency and duration after my departure, greatly decreasing the chances the three remaining chicks would successfully fledge.



Based on the frequency and activities of polar bears on Cooper Island in the last three years it appears likely that bears stranded on the beach looking for food will continue to cause major decreases in breeding success in the future. Surprisingly, it appears that nonbreeding horned puffins, looking for nesting cavities and competing with guillemots for those cavities, could have an almost comparable impact on breeding success. Since the presence of both bears and puffins is related to the decrease in the ice extent and since there is no indication that the decrease in summer ice extent will reverse itself in the near future, both bear and puffin numbers on Cooper Island will likely increase in future breeding seasons.

Although the marine waters adjacent to Cooper are becoming more amenable to puffins, the establishment of a puffin colony on Cooper in the long-term will be prevented by the presence of polar bears that in recent years have preyed on puffin nestlings.



In the past week colleagues in Barrow and friends in Seattle have asked what the future of the guillemot colony is given this year’s observations. The short-term outlook is that breeding adults, with their high fidelity to nest sites, will continue to return to the colony even though breeding is likely to fail in most years because of bears and puffins. This lack of productivity will mean that, without immigration from other colonies, there will be no birds reaching breeding age and recruiting into the population. With overwinter mortality of breeding birds at approximately 15 percent and if no recruitment occurs, the colony will decrease in size by approximately 15 percent every year. This would mean that in 2025 the colony would be back down to ten pairs of guillemots, the same size it was in 1972 when I found it -– allowing me to exit saying "this is where I came in".



Of course this assumes that the nest sites the bears destroy every year will be reconstructed to provide a nesting cavity and that some other factor doesn’t come into play. For instance, increasing erosion coupled with increasing storms and wave height may result in nest sites being washed away by late summer and fall storms.

While this assessment sounds gloomy it is also realistic, since the annual trend in summer ice extent leaves little doubt that there will be an ice-free Arctic sometime in this century. The number of polar bears forced to use the edge of the Arctic Basin as summering habitat will increase, and Cooper Island is one of the more logical places for them to aggregate on the Alaskan coast. And horned puffins will likely continue to visit Cooper Island in small numbers, drawn by the increases in subarctic fish in the region and a lack of suitable nesting cavities in the region.

The only way to know what will happen, of course, is to visit Cooper Island. And given this scenario, it is important to recognize the one certain fledge from the colony this year, since it may well be one of the last guillemots to fledge from the island. It survived a puffin visit that resulted in the death of its sibling and two bear visits that repositioned and almost destroyed the nest site where it was raised to fledging by its parents. If it can survive the next three years, it will likely return to Cooper Island for the 2012 breeding season. Even though the outlook for the colony is grim, seeing if that chick – the "Class of 2009" -- does return will be enough to make me excited at the start of the field season three years from now.

I'll have more thoughts on the field season, and the ongoing prospects for the colony, in the weeks to come. It looks to be a busy fall, with presentations as part of International Polar-Palooza, as well as places closer to home, and more analysis of the summer's data and how it fits into the bigger picture on Cooper Island. Thanks to you who have followed the Cooper Island field season this summer. And special thanks to those who provided donations of moral,logistical and financial support allowing me to work on Cooper Island during this past field season. I plan to continue these posts here and on my website (cooperisland.org) in the off season and hope you visit during the coming months.

Back to Civilization

08/23/2009

Barrow, Alaska, Aug. 22, 2009 -- Last Monday evening near the end of a rainy stormy day, I called Lewis Brower, who would be my transportation to Barrow, to let him know that I hoped to see him on Wednesday when winds were predicted to be close to 10 mph. All day Monday wind speeds had been in the high teens and low 20s and from a direction that meant waves were breaking on both sides of the island. To my surprise Lewis told me he was getting his boat ready and would be on his way from Barrow in about half an hour. The sky, which had been dark gray most of the day, was starting to brighten to the west with blue patches contrasting sharply with the dark clouds. While winds were starting to slightly decrease there were still occasional 25 mph gusts and the weather service did not predict any change to occur until Wednesday.



I did not want to get my hopes up. After five weeks with only a single one-hour of direct contact with humans (when Ocean Watch stopped by for an hour to drop off the inverter), I was anxious to see and talk to most anyone. I was operating under the assumption that Lewis would likely not make it all the way to the island, but knowing that if he did I would have to be ready to leave. I started to dismantle and pack everything that had kept me alive and relatively happy for the previous two months. This meant taking down the wind generator, battery bank, propane stove, VHF radio and tower, computer connection to the satellite phone and antenna and storing and packing food and camping gear. I set to the side those things I would need to get me through the night if Lewis had to turn back. The latter consisting of a sleeping bag, shotgun with shells, a satellite phone, a small primus stove and a small amount of food. If I did not leave I would have to sleep in a corner of the cabin that had gone from my living quarters to a storage shed in less than two hours.

Against all odds at about 9 p.m., I saw Lewis’s boat coming through the waves and with his help the boat was loaded up and cabin boarded up within three hours. We left Cooper just as the sun was setting at 1130 p.m. and arrived in Barrow about two hours later. After almost five weeks alone it was good to see and talk with anyone, but especially good to see Lewis, who combines the skills and knowledge of someone who has lived his entire life in the Arctic with a positive attitude and sense of humor that is maintained in, apparently, most situations.

The following morning I awoke in Barrow to see that it was lucky we used the weather window we did since winds were again high. Just a few yards from my room the Chukchi Sea beach at Barrow was experiencing high surf. A storm a few weeks earlier had covered part of the beach road and this storm had waves crashing over the sand bags and piles of gravel that were reinforcing the beach.



After spending Tuesday morning dealing with the transition from the cold and solitary life I had on Cooper Island, I had lunch at Brower’s Café. The café dates from the late 19th century and is in the oldest framed building in the Arctic. It originally housed the Cape Smythe Whaling and Trading Company. It now has an arch made of two bowhead whale jawbones and two frames of umiaqs, the skin boats still used for spring whaling. While there are now a surprising number of restaurants in Barrow, only Brower’s Café with its history and view of the beach and ocean, provides its patrons with a sense of history and with a view that lets you know you are in the Arctic.



I am now back in Seattle and dealing with end of season logistics, but hope to have a post tomorrow about what happened with the guillemots, puffins and polar bears during my last days on the island. I have heard from a number of people who have asked how the guillemots did and want to pass on the good news that the first of the guillemots fledged on August 16, the offspring of Yellow-Black-Red and White-Gray-Brown. It left wearing the brown color band that will identify it as a member of the Class of 2009.

Photo Credit: Art Howard | George Divoky

Is It a Bird or a Bear?

08/14/2009

Cooper Island, Aug. 14, 2009 -- During the past two years I have been fortunate to participate in Polar-Palooza, an International Polar Year outreach program that, as part of a multi-media presentation, allows Arctic and Antarctic researchers to talk to the public, school groups and teacher workshops about their research while providing background about the causes and consequences of global warming. I have had the pleasure of joining the Polar-Palooza tour in a number of cities and will be part of the International Polar-Palooza tour this fall.

When presenting to school groups one of my tasks is to ask ”what is wrong with this picture?” as a PhotoShopped image of a polar bear walking behind some penguins appears on the screen. This summer, though not as incredible as the penguin/polar bear pairing, I find myself looking at the images obtained over the past month on Cooper Island and thinking “what is wrong with these pictures?” But I know that the images of polar bears walking around the colony, sleeping on the beach and approaching the campsite, things I could never have imagined before 2002,are the product of habitat degradation rather than any image manipulation.

Because of the frequency and type of bear encounters in August 2008, I was looking for some way to have an alarm that would let me know a bear was approaching the cabin. This spring, when Marc Cornelissen, an Arctic researcher who has worked on Spitsbergen, a Norwegian island, offered to loan me some tripwire alarms I could use around the cabin, I eagerly accepted.

I had met Marc in April 2008 when he was mentoring a select group of European students who had been chosen to be “ambassadors” for the Ben and Jerry’s Climate Change College. Marc was touring Alaska with the students to allow them to see where climate change was most rapidly occurring. (Ben and Jerry’s funded the college in part with proceeds from the sale of a “Baked Alaska” ice cream that had the tagline “If it’s melted it’s ruined”. Unfortunately, this flavor is only available in the U.K. and Europe.) I spent a day with Marc and the students in Barrow, making a presentation to them about my findings on Cooper Island and listening to their questions and concerns about climate change in the Arctic.

Watch the The Birdman


Marc’s bear alarms arrived in a surprisingly small shipping container from Holland just as the field season began. The four alarms each consisted of a small plastic box, about the size of a cigarette pack, with carabiner (a clip with a spring) on two sides. One carabiner was attached to a pin inserted in the box, which triggered the alarm when pulled. When deployed, a taut string runs from the alarm’s pin to a post or other vertical structure. Increasing tension on the string pulls the pin and triggers the alarm in the box. The high pitched warbling alarm is surprisingly loud.



I set up the alarms this summer on the door and window sides of the cabin. Having tested each alarm by doing my imitation of how a bear might approach the camp, I did feel more confident when sitting in the cabin, and especially when falling asleep. Unfortunately, the tripwire lines attached to the alarms proved very attractive to the snow bunting adults and young that feed near the cabin. One of the shortcomings for birds on the island is a paucity of places to perch and it turns out that if more than two buntings sit on the string at the same time, they can pull the pin and set off the alarm. The first two times the alarms were triggered were during the day, and I emerged from the cabin with my shotgun at the ready (and adrenalin extremely high) to see a small flock of buntings flying away from the cabin -- and from the high pitched alarm. It was good to know that my granola and oatmeal were safe from any seed-eating birds that might be considering a raid on the cabin. While it is true that the number of people killed by Snow Buntings in Alaska is just one less than the number killed by polar bears, to avoid such false alarms I started to deploy the alarms only as I was going to sleep.



Having the alarms was especially comforting last Friday night, since a bear had arrived on the island during a strong north wind that day. After nosing around a bit the bear had quickly gone to sleep behind a large box about quarter-mile from my cabin, so I turned in as well. At 4 a.m. Saturday morning, however, one of the alarms went off. I looked outside expecting to see the bear running from the cabin, but instead found it sniffing and licking the alarm. The bear only ran away when I shouted and made it aware that a human was in the cabin.

Later examination of nest sites and the bear’s tracks showed that it had walked through the colony turning over nests and eating guillemot chicks before approaching the cabin. The only reason I can think for the bear considering the alarm as food is that guillemot chicks do make noises when their nest sites are lifted, and the bear might have thought that the alarm was the world’s most high pitched and loudest guillemot chick.

Two nights later I had quite a different experience, which I was able to capture on the motion sensitive cameras I use for monitoring feeding activity and other nest activity. A bear that was not on the island when I went to sleep approached the cabin at 3:30 a.m.. Upon triggering the alarm it turned and ran from the cabin. Here’s some primitive stills from the video – shot in infrared -- of the bear-alarm encounter (the edge of my cabin can be seen along the left side):









So both times bears triggered the alarm, the alarms performed their function – which was to alert me to the fact that a bear was within 2 meters of the cabin. And now I know that when I hear an alarm I might look out to see a bear running away from the alarm – or I might see a bear trying to eat the alarm. And I suppose if I hear a high-pitched, warbling bear I will have the relationship to it that Captain Hook had to a crocodile that swallowed the clock.



The alarms were the only really positive part of the two visits by bears this past weekend. While the bears in mid July had little interest in just-hatched guillemots, chicks now apparently have enough fat and mass to be of nutritional interest to the bears. The strength of the bears, and their desire to get to the chicks,is obvious from the damage they did to nests.

Large floorboards and other structures that I have never been able to move (and that have been in place since the Eisenhower administration) were pushed 2-3 meters and even flipped by the bears. Damage to the tent we use for storage was more a factor of a bear’s claws rather than its strength, but will require purchase of a new fly before next season.



Both bears had to swim through rather rough waters to reach the island, and sleep, rather than food, appeared to be their primary interest. One bear spent all day Saturday curled up in the driftwood, during a substantial rain storm. The other made a small depression behind a large box and spent all day Sunday sleeping out of the wind.

So thanks to Marc Cornelissen for allowing me to sleep a bit more soundly in the Cooper Island “Bird House” – and also thanks for his arranging to have the Ben and Jerry’s Climate Change College donate funds to partially fund this summer’s field camp. My next post will be the official “State of the Colony” address, as the first guillemot chicks are reaching the age to leave the nest.

Photo Credit: George Divoky

Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They’re Fledged

08/12/2009

Cooper Island, Aug. 11, 2009 -- Of all the questions people ask me about guillemots, one of the least common is "What the heck does ‘guillemot’ mean?". This surprises me, since I would think that would be one of the first things people would wonder about the bird. It turns out that "guillemot" is the diminutive of Guillaume – the French version of "William". But it also turns out that no one seems to know why the genus Cepphus – or in England the closely related members of the genus Uria - are called guillemots. When talking to school groups I sometimes mention that the name means "tiny bill" in French, and when compared to puffins and other alcids, guillemots do have a tiny bill. But that is certainly not how they got their name.



Diminutive guillemots have occupied my time over the past three weeks as I monitor the daily growth of the chicks. Guillemots emerge from their egg at about 35 grams and are continuously brooded by the parents for about six days. While in the nests the chicks provide a unique opportunity for study. One of the problems in studying seabirds is that they, by definition, spend much of their time at sea. Terrestrial researchers, like humans, can watch seabirds from shore or from a boat, but it is at seabird colonies, where there are lots of land-bound nestlings being fed by sea-going parents, that much seabird research is done. Studying the growth and survival of chicks can reflect local variation in the abundance and type of prey available to parent seabirds raising young. In recent decades, as short and long-term changes in marine ecosystems have become issues of concern, there has been an increasing awareness that seabirds, as "apex predators", can be used to monitor seasonal and annual changes in marine ecosystems. This is especially true in the Arctic, where a lack of commercial fisheries and limited sampling, due to both logistical and funding issues, means that major changes can occur but go unnoticed by scientists and resource managers.

Black Guillemot parents and their nestlings have some characteristics that make them excellent monitors of prey (fish) availability. Reasons for this include:

• The limited foraging range of the species of about 25 km means there is a rather clearly delineated area being sampled. Compare this to albatross chicks being fed in Hawaii, whose parents may fly thousands of miles north to the Aleutian Islands for food.

• Parent guillemots return to the nest holding a single prey item sideways in their bill, so the type of prey being returned can be monitored by photographs or observations. Many seabirds return to the nest and regurgitate to feed their chicks, so that the prey being provided cannot be easily ascertained.



• Guillemot chicks have a very rapid growth rate, increasing from 35 grams at hatching to approximately ten times that weight at fledging. A ten-fold increase in weight in a five-week period requires a constant supply of high quality food, especially since the majority of that growth takes place in the first four weeks.

• Unlike almost all other seabirds, guillemots raise (or can raise) two chicks. When parents are having trouble feeding both chicks, one starts to see a major drop in the younger (beta) chick’s weight as well as chafed areas on the beta’s head and neck. This is the product of the older (alpha) chick grabbing the younger chick to gain dominance so that the alpha can sit closest to the nest-site entrance -– and to the next fish being brought to the nest. When prey is extremely limited the beta chick can starve in the nest or, more rarely, leave the nest and hope to find a nearby nest site where it might be ’adopted ‘ by parents who are having better luck in finding fish.

• The subspecies of Black Guillemot found on Cooper Island is adapted to feeding on prey associated with ice and cold water. Changes in ice conditions or sea surface temperature affect the fish species that guillemots are used to consuming.



All of these characteristics have assisted in monitoring changes in prey availability in the waters off Cooper Island in recent years. Arctic Cod, a high fat fish associated with cold waters, were the primary prey fed to chicks for first 25 years. There was some minor annual variation in cod availability with slower chick growth in some years but with large adult cod remaining the primary prey returned to nestlings. It was not until this century that we began to frequently see sculpin, a nearshore bottom fish, being brought back to chicks in numbers later in the nestling period.

Sculpin are abundant in the nearshore throughout the summer and guillemots apparently turn to them when Arctic Cod are no longer available. Sculpin are less fatty than cod and have a bony and horny head that can lodge in a chick’s throat. Some chicks appear to have a natural aversion to sculpin, letting them pile up in the nest site while waiting for an alternate prey.



Up until the last week, Arctic Cod were readily available off Cooper, as evidenced both by growth rates and observations of fish, but as the last of the ice melted from just north of the island changes began to occur that I will discuss in a future post. The other factor that has become an issue this year in monitoring chick growth is the number of nests lost to polar bears and chicks killed by the Horned Puffins. This has reduced the sample size of chicks that can be weighed daily and parents that can be observed carrying fish.. With the late summer retreat of the pack ice, mid to late August has been the time when seasonal changes in prey have been most pronounced and this year there are fewer than normal chicks to monitor the changes in prey that will be taking place.

The reasons for the small number of active nests at this point in the breeding season are something I will discuss later this week. Suffice it to say the past ten days have demonstrated one of the shortcomings of using seabird nestlings as monitors of prey availability, in that a range of factors not directly related to guillemot prey can reduce nestling survival. Which is to say one shouldn’t buy guillemot futures in a bear market – a variation on don’t count your chickens before they’re fledged.

Photo Credit: George Divoky

Driftwood: Sign of a Changing Arctic

08/09/2009

Cooper Island, Aug. 7, 2009 -- Driftwood lines in the middle of Cooper Island are important for nesting terns and waterfowl, but in any given year there typically has been little accumulation of wood on the island's beaches. Until recently, the short duration and limited amount of ice-free water were not conducive to movement and depostion of driftwood. Hundreds of miles north of the treeline, driftwoood on Cooper Island apparently comes primarly from the Mackenzie River. When the Beaufort Sea had limited open water, wood coming out of the Mackenzie would likely have had little chance to drift before it was frozen into the pack ice in the fall. Once frozen into the ice it might have stayed there for years given the minimal retreat of the pack ice in past decades.

This year's unprecedented accumulation of driftwood on Cooper Island is one more sign of change in the Arctic. As the ice melted over the past month, pieces of wood that had been frozen in the ice are frequently seen floating offshore as they approach the island and now form a substantial line of driftwood along the entire north side of the island. It will take major fall storms to lift this wood higher on the island where it can provide nesting habitat. For now it provides some diversity during walks on the north beach.

Photo Credit: George Divoky

The Edge of Civilization

08/06/2009

Cooper Island, Aug. 6, 2009 -- Cooper Island is only 25 miles (as the guillemot flies) from the community of Barrow, the largest village on the Alaska’s North Slope. When the atmospherics are right one can see the inverted mirage of Barrow shimmering on the northwest horizon, and on calm days there is a low hum as the village’s generators, fueled by a small natural gas field a few miles out of town, provide power to the 4500 residents. These reminders that there is a town just over the horizon make me aware that my field camp is in a location that should not really be referred to as "remote".

While there are daily visual and auditory reminders of Cooper’s proximity to a large native village, this summer’s issues in transporting critical equipment to the island are evidence that this sand and gravel spit is more inaccessible than remote – and that, surprisingly, its accessibility has decreased over the last three decades.



For the bulk of my time out here access to the island was by air, with airplanes and pilots available in Barrow from 1975 until the late 1990s. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Naval Arctic Research Lab (NARL) provided readily available and inexpensive logistical support to researchers working in the field across the North Slope. NARL was a product of "cold war" concerns with Russia, established after the end of WWII and shut down (and turned over to a native corporation) when détente was warming that war in the 1980s. NARL had a fleet of airplanes able to land on the driftwood-cleared beach section of the island that passed for a runway. Landing on sand and gravel substrates requires a "tail dragger" airplane, which has a tail wheel to reduce the chances of going "nose down", and typically also has over-sized "tundra tires" for landing on irregular and soft surfaces. Even after NARL closed, there were still a number of air charter services in Barrow that had suitable aircraft for landing on the island. Inupiat families needed regular transportation to and from fish camps and summer cabins where river bars or a relatively dry section of tundra provided a "runway".

This "golden age" of access to Cooper ended abruptly in the late 1990s when Barrow air services found the cost of insurance for off-runway "bush" landings to be prohibitive.

Getting out to the island in June suddenly meant going over the ice by snowmachine or hitching a ride on a helicopter that happened to be heading east. Once on the island, the melting and breaking nearshore ice prevents travel over the ice or in the water until mid-July, when "open water" is sufficient to allow safe boat travel. For the last half of the field season all travel is by boat – although a North Slope Borough helicopter can be used for an emergency. While in recent years the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management and Barrow Arctic Science Consortium have been extremely helpful in donating some transportation, budget cuts and other considerations have limited their ability to help.

While having planes and boats in Barrow has allowed access to Cooper Island annually for over three decades, it has been the interest and concern of Barrow residents who operate the planes and boats that have really allowed the field camp to persist through the years. For almost a decade from the mid 1980s until the mid 1990s, pilot Chuck Caldwell resupplied Cooper Island, first when he was working for a charter firm, later when he had his own air service, and finally with his private airplane. On one memorable evening, when I did not expect visitors, Chuck dropped in with a pizza from the just-opened pizza place in Barrow. He had been eating there with his family, and started wondering if a pizza could be kept warm long enough to get to Cooper Island. Being a pilot up for any challenge, Chuck was soon landing on Cooper’s sand and gravel with the first take-out pizza to ever arrive on this "remote" island. Still warm from being in its thermal take-out container, it was delicious.

Almost twenty years later, Lewis Brower, a great boat captain who has been one of our primary boat charters in recent years, made another unexpected pizza delivery -- only this time by boat. Craig George, who has been a good friend during the last 30 years, is now a regular visitor in his boat, and frequently resupplies the island and transports personnel. My near daily radio checks with Craig on the VHF play a major role in making Cooper feel less isolated, if not more accessible.



The most recent example of how inaccessible the island has become was trying to replace a broken inverter for my power system. The inverter transforms the DC power generated by the wind generator and solar panels to AC power like that found in your house. When the old inverter inexplicably "died" in June I put in an urgent call to our electrical guru Jim Gamache to order a replacement. It took less than 24 hours to get the replacement inverter to Barrow from the lower 48, but took over two weeks to get it the last 25 miles out to the island.



The inverter made an impressive arrival on the island when it did get here, as it was brought out by the sailing vessel Ocean Watch at the beginning of the Northwest Passage leg of its Around the America’s trip. Three of the crew members were able to spend a few hours on the island. Read Herb McCormick’s account. While they didn’t bring me a take-out pizza from Barrow, they did bring groceries (I was happy to note that oranges are still being sold commercially and less happy to see that Pringles are still being manufactured), a care package from the Friends of Cooper Island "home base" in Seattle, and the long-awaited inverter.

It was unusual to have someone leave the island and head east, rather than make the short trip west back to Barrow. It was also unusual to think that when I next see Ocean Watch, ice conditions in Canada permitting, it will be in Seattle in mid-2010, when she will be returning after a cruise circumnavigating the Americas, which will take its crew to some truly remote locations.

Assuming, of course, I can get off the island and back to Seattle by then ... So my thanks to the captain and crew of Ocean Watch, but also to all those who over the years have provided both the transportation and camaraderie needed to live on this barrier island at the edge of civilization.

Photo Credit: George Divoky

August Surprise

Cooper Island, Aug. 4, 2009 -- The National Weather Service has been saying that the main pack ice is over 100 miles away --and that is apparently true -- but this aggregations of very small floes and ice chunks showed up north of Cooper late on Sunday. It persisted through Monday -- when the picture was taken -- and guillemots could be seen diving next to the floes and returning arctic cod to their young. The ice charts show this to be the only ice for this area of coast and its appearance off Cooper was fortuitous for the guillemots. I am hoping that some might wash up on the beach so I can use to replenish my drinking water supply. Back when multi-year ice was common on the beach, that was my main water supply.

Photo Credit: George Divoky

Polar Bear Update

08/03/2009

I was writing up the text for the "krill" last night and then there was a need to deal with a bear that had been sleeping on the north beach after coming in off the ocean. Clearly the cabin is the best (or worst) smelling thing on the island and bears always seem to head for camp after they wake up. I had to turn the bear around and then wait for it to walk off to the east before going to sleep.

I turned the bear around with a "cracker shell" that is fired from a shotgun and essentially has a firecracker like device which goes off near the bear. It did not scare this bear much since within 20 yards it slowed down and started going through driftwood looking for food. It ended up going to a grass patch where a bear had slept earlier in the week. I assumed this one would do the same, but instead it started eating the seed heads of the beach rye grass. After 3-4 minutes it moved on to another patch of grass where it did the same.

Photo Credit: George Divoky

Pink Feces -- A Sign of Climate Change Adaptation?

08/02/2009

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 2, 2009 -- My focus on the birds breeding (or trying to breed) on Cooper Island runs the risk of making it seem like the island and surrounding waters are important to a relatively limited avifauna. In reality, the island is on one of the major migratory pathways for birds breeding on the tundra of Alaska’s North Slope and the western Canadian Arctic. In July and August, after breeding is complete, large numbers of waterfowl, shorebirds and seabirds move to the nearshore Beaufort Sea and then westward to Point Barrow before heading south through the Chukchi Sea to wintering grounds, for many south of the equator.



Some of these species -- like the strings of eiders that are regularly seen from the island -- pass by without stopping to feed or rest in the nearshore. For a number of species, however, Point Barrow and the barrier islands to the east (including Cooper Island) are important feeding areas as they prepare to undertake major migrations. Adults that just completed breeding need to restore their fat while just fledged young need to both build up reserves and develop foraging skills. Oceanographic conditions in the waters north of Point Barrow and Cooper Island increase the abundance and availability of marine invertebrates in this region, including the crustaceans commonly referred to as "krill". Krill are an important food for bowhead whales, who sieve it with their baleen plates. The abundance of krill in this region is one of the reasons Barrow is a whaling community and also why there are so many whale bones on Cooper Island. It is also the reason why I now can’t walk down the beach without having hundreds of gulls circling overhead.



While in past years I have regularly seen flocks of birds feeding on krill just offshore or on the beach, this year the feeding flocks have been exceptionally large and persistent. Starting about three weeks ago, flocks of Sabine’s gulls, Arctic terns, glaucous gulls and black-legged kittiwakes began to feed around the island, with groups of many hundreds of birds roosting on the beach in compact flocks between feeding bouts. They were later joined by phalaropes, sandpipers, jaegers and some waterfowl that walked the beaches feeding on krill washed up by the waves. The number of birds, and the noise they generate, has been truly impressive, with at least five thousand birds wheeling over and near the island as they finish feeding on one swarm of krill and move on to another. The efficiency of the flocks feeding on the beached krill is amazing as they clear thousands of the half-inch long invertebrates within a few hours.



Growth rates of guillemot chicks have been high for the past two weeks, and arctic cod has been the primary prey -- surprising findings given the distance to the pack ice and my past observations of how ice retreat affects cod availability and chick growth. It turns out that the cod, and the guillemots that feed on them, are benefiting from the abundance of krill. Examination of fish dropped in the colony by parents has found cod stomachs full of krill. Additionally, parent birds are feeding on krill directly as evidenced by the splashes of pink feces around nests. The krill are benefitting parent guillemots directly, by providing them with prey and indirectly, by increasing the densities of fish for them to feed their young.

The next few weeks are critical for the guillemot nestlings as they approach the weight of adults and have large energy needs to grow, maintain weight and push out the flight feathers that will allow them to fly out to sea at 35 days of age. Should krill become less abundant as this summer progresses it will be interesting to see how fish composition and chick growth is affected. While I don’t have any way of measuring krill abundance near the island, I do have a few thousand gulls and terns that will be letting me know if there are still krill in the area.

It is observations like these that keep me coming back to Cooper Island year after year. If as ice retreats annual krill densities increase, Arctic cod or even some other fish species, could maintain high densities near the island and allow successful breeding in the absence of ice. This field season could be a preview of how the guillemot colony might persist through summers with no late summer ice -- and an important reminder that one needs to remember that species will be adapting to -- and not just be impacted by -- climate change.

Photo Credit: George Divoky

Polar Bear Update

07/29/2009

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 28, 2009 -- Record high of 70 degrees F (23 degrees F above normal) in Barrow yesterday which tied the previous record high. The temperature on Cooper Island was 66 degrees F and I would have enjoyed the warmer air more if there was not a bear trying to cool down in grass clumps in the tern colony (0.5 to 0.75 miles from camp, but very visible). At one point the bear dug a hole in a grassy dune and slept for awhile -- which would have been more cooling if the permafrost was still here.

After sleeping for about three hours it walked east out of sight (both because of the distance and all the heat waves coming off the island) at 7 p.m., but was back and visible at 2 a.m. this morning when it searched around in driftwood before heading to the beach and apparently swimming north.

For more about the permafrost watch an audio slide show: A Sinking Village".

More on Polar Bears in the Wrong Places:

Roaming Polar Bears Spotted in Iceland

Goose Eggs: Polar Bears' Salvation?

Photo Credit: George Divoky