Seabirds as Sentinels Auklets, Puffins, Shearwaters, and the View from Destruction Island

About this book

Every spring, thousands of rhinoceros auklets return to Destruction Island off Washington's coast, where they dig burrows, lay eggs, and raise their chicks. Small, grey, and adorned with a curious horn on their bill, these funny-looking birds have become an unlikely but vitally important indicator for the health of oceans and the Pacific ecosystem as a whole.

In Seabirds as Sentinels, Eric Wagner joins a team of scientists who have been tracking the lives of auklets and other seabirds to gauge the effects of climate change in the region. The North Pacific – sometimes called the Blue Serengeti – is one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, supporting salmon, whales, seals, and countless other species, including people. Yet its waters are changing in unprecedented ways. Mass die-offs of birds, hordes of jellyfish blanketing beaches, and the sudden appearance of tropical species all point to an ocean in flux.

Wagner intersperses accounts of research expeditions with deep dives into phytoplankton, forage fish, lighthouses, ocean currents, and other important elements in the Pacific Ocean's tangled ecological web. Readers travel into auklet burrows by fibre-optic camera and witness the eerie arrival of seabirds under the cover of night, seeing firsthand how these birds have tried to adapt to widespread environmental upheaval. Weaving together natural history, marine science, and the myriad stories that humans tell about their environments, Seabirds as Sentinels helps us keep a close watch on the uncertain future of the oceans that sustain us all.

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Biography

Eric Wagner is a staff writer with the Puget Sound Institute at the University of Washington, Tacoma. He is the author of After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens (Washington, 2020) and Penguins in the Desert (Oregon State, 2018). He also wrote the text for Once and Future River: Reclaiming the Duwamish (Washington, 2016).