In Washington State, there is a bewildering abundance of seabirds.

The seabirds of the surf zone that always capture my imagination are in the Alcid family: murres, murrelets, guillemots, auklets and puffins. At their largest—less than a kilogram—they stand a little under a meter in height. Well, at least a murre with its neck stretched out does. The smallest ones, ancient murrelets, are basically fluffballs. The entire family is adapted to moving from air to water seamlessly. Unlike shearwaters that plunge-dive into the water and stroke down a few meters with their long wings pulled in, murres and their cousins can fly underwater as easily as in air. Murres and puffins have been pulled up in gill nets set on the floor of the coastal shelf—typically 50 to 200 meters deep. Even their bodies belie this predisposition to move among fluids. An Alcid is a football with wings—bill pointed out straight, scrunched in neck, short tail, feet perfectly pointed, shortish wings beating the air. No gliders in this family.

Murre and chick—Photo by Peter Hodum

Murre eating a rockfish—Photo by Jane Dolliver

Figuring out that puzzle—who is connected to what and which little adjustment of the picture can ripple out into a major change somewhere else—can keep a scientist busy, happy and increasingly worried, for a lifetime. In my case, I followed the path that many naturalists have, starting with the beauty of nature, wrapped by the connectedness of everything, literally wanting to turn over every rock on my study site—a murre colony on the outer coast—just to see what was there. 

What I found was fascinating, a complex interplay of habitat, birds and people, the tendrils of which dictated the fate of the murres.

Although Murres spend most of their time at sea, only coming to land to breed on rocky cliff shores or islands, they are the densest-nesting birds in the world, with hundreds or maybe tens of thousands living shoulder-to-shoulder in groups that may stretch across a rocky outcropping. Loud! smelly! One advantage of this colonial nesting strategy is keeping neighboring predators at bay. No glaucous-winged gull with half a brain would dare to brave the phalanx of long, sharp murre bills pointing out towards the impending egg predator danger. Nope. A murre colony full of murres is impossible for an egg- or chick-predator to get into. But on my colony, another bird threatened. Bald eagles in slow recovery from years of egg-shell thinning, habitat loss, and hunting were on the rise. And the murres were no match for these rapacious birds. 

An eagle in the colony means “Abandon!” especially if it is early in the season when most female murres haven’t yet laid an egg. Suddenly the early layers are all alone. Danger, Will Robinson! Better to give up the egg and try another year than face certain death at the talons of a raptor. That means a free lunch for the gulls. More eagles, more murre scares, more eggs eaten by gulls, until an entire nesting area could be wiped out for the season.

Murre success and numbers of murres on the colony were going down. Then the murres started to adapt. They learned that when they nest back into the salmonberry thicket, the canopy of vines closes over them, protecting them from eagle attack. Even when they landed on the edge of the cliff, the eagles were literally too broad-shouldered to make it through the salmonberry to where the murres were safely—albeit shivering with fear—on their eggs. Eggs kept and hatched; colony saved! 

However, two and a half months of murres nesting shoulder-to-shoulder means a heck of a lot of fertilizer squirted out and a heck of a lot of bird feet padding back and forth compressing the forest soil. The salmonberry began to die back, and the soil eroded away in the winter storms, opening up newly-exposed rock face. Suddenly eagles could access their prey again. 

These cycles: eagle-gull-murre; murre-salmonberry-eagle are just two of the many that weave together to tell the ecology of the species and the place. In this case, eagle conservation (a good thing!) and gull use of human habitats (not so good) allowed both of those populations to expand, perhaps beyond what murres had recently experienced, and certainly beyond what they could sustain, at least in the short-term. Murre populations along the Pacific Northwest tend to fluctuate, in part because of this cattywhompus cycle.

But of course that’s not the end of the story; it never is in ecology. Connections mean there are always new forces pushing and pulling. As conditions shift, murres, and their puffin and auklet cousins, are responding by slowly, slowly expanding their ranges, usually to the north. In California, new rocky outcroppings have been colonized. In Alaska, more rhinoceros auklets have been seen recently. If we give them space, they will come. If the ocean provides the forage fish, they will stay. Spotting Alcids, whether from the San Juans ferry or from Dungeness Spit, from a salmon-fishing boat, the Seattle seawall, or the beach on Whidbey Island, these are all amazing experiences I don’t want to stop having.

Julia K. Parrish is the Lowell A. and Frankie L. Wakefield Professor of Ocean Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. A marine biologist, a conservation biologist, and a specialist in citizen science, Julia has conducted field investigations of marine birds and their habitats for more than 30 years.

In November 2019, Julia was named an AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are chosen by their peers for “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.” Julia was elected for her work in marine ecology. 

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There are several articles related to forage fish in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound,. For example: https://www.eopugetsound.org/magazine/armoring-sanjuans

Some aspects of the decline of forage fish are described in the Puget Sound Partnership’s Vital Signs: https://vitalsigns.pugetsoundinfo.wa.gov/VitalSign/Detail/20

You can read more about the relationships between eagles and murres at: https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Cape_Meares/wildlife_and_habitat/murres_and_eagles.html