Sea birds, pipefish, and koyaaniskatsi
Posted by Michael on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
From Guardian (UK):
“The snake pipefish, virtually unknown around the UK in 2002, has undergone a massive, baffling and dangerous expansion since then, scientists have discovered…. Since 2000 sea birds have not been able to find sufficient food either to sustain their chicks or give them the energy to breed, a problem that is blamed on the dwindling populations of small fish and sand eels that sea birds eat, a phenomenon scientists have been unable to explain…. Now parent guillemots, terns and puffins are scooping pipefish from the sea for their chicks as substitutes for their normal fish food. But the pipefish body is rigid and bony and extremely hard for chicks to eat. Biologists have found dozens left uneaten in single nests while chicks have choked to death on their bodies.”
The seabirds are starving, because their normal food is disappearing, for reasons uncertain and no doubt complicated — warming waters, changes in phytoplankton, changes in currents, changes in other fish populations, toxins in the waters — and so the birds turn to what’s available: a bony, almost fatless relative of the seahorse.
The seabird populations are collapsing:
Sea bird numbers have been hit by a series of consecutive breeding failures in recent years, affecting skuas, guillemots, shags and others. The problem is starvation.
Why care about sea birds? Well, because they’re another canary in the coalmine, another example of koyaaniskatsi, life out of balance. “Sea birds breed fairly slowly and a number of bad years could have a long-term devastating impact,” said a professor studying the problem.
Bats, bees, amphibians, sea birds, turtles, tuna, right whales, sharks…. the list goes on.
We may be eating pipefish ourselves, all too soon.
Don’t forget to chew.
Tags: fish, life out of balance, ocean, pipefish, sea birds, species