The recent mass deaths of kororā, little blue penguins, in Northland and concerns about fate of emperor penguins in the Antarctic have highlighted the threat of global warming to seabirds.
University of Auckland School doctoral researcher Edin Whitehead is tracking the fate of several seabird species in northern Aotearoa.
She is most focused on petrels and shearwaters for her PhD, but she is deeply concerned about all seabirds.
Takahikare Raro Photo: Edin Whitehead
A review of threats to seabirds in 2019 formed the first part of Whitehead’s doctoral degree.
“What I’ve been doing is looking the health of these birds, looking their internal physiology, seeing how much energy they’re using each year to raise their chicks, looking at their breeding success, how many chicks in the colonies are manging to get away each year.”
She tells Kathryn Ryan that the impacts of climate change go beyond the sea.
“Climate change is going to result in things like increased storm events, increased severity of storms and that’s a problem for birds where it can wash away their burrows and for other seabirds like tara iti, the fairy terns, where they have really low lying nests on sandy shores that can just get completely annihilated by those storms.”
Titi Wainui Fairy Prion Photo: Edin Whitehead
But the challenges to their survival are exacerbated by fisheries, plastic and light pollution, and human disturbance, Whitehead says.
“There’s not one greatest threat to seabirds, it’s the sort of synergistic effects of all these threats together that are really hammering them.”
These factors also potentially influence the seabirds’ food resources and how they forage, she says.
“Some of the birds we’ve tracked have gone 2750 kilometres east … off into the Pacific to forage out there and then come back to feed their chicks from that.”
Oi Greyfaced Petrel Photo: Edin Whitehead
Some species are at greater risk because they can’t follow the food, she says.
“In terms of [petrels and shearwaters’] breeding timing, they’re really locked into the season so they can’t really adjust the timing of things.
“Petrels and shearwaters are really tied to their colonies where they breed so they might not be able to adjust quite as quickly in terms of how rapid our climate is changing.”
So if it becomes too difficult for petrels and shearwaters to raise their chicks, they give up to prioritise their own survival, she says.
“It has definitely been getting harder for these birds to raise their chicks, especially with the marine heatwaves we’ve been having recently, it seems to be having a real impact on the amount of energy they have to put into raising their chicks every year.
“We’ve also been seeing chicks not necessarily reaching a good healthy weight before fledging.”
She says she’s been amazed to learn of seabirds’ resilience “but equally there comes a point when all of these threats compound and it’s just a bit too much for them”.
“That’s when we really need to lend a helping hand and do everything we can to minimise what threats we can tackle for seabirds.”
To provide some reprieve from the worrying data, Whitehead also enjoys photography.
“I always try and take a little time off when we’re out in the field because we are so, so privileged to visit these amazing places and spend time with these birds on their colonies and a focus of mine during my doctorate has been trying to capture this side of the life of seabirds that people don’t necessarily see.
“That’s been quite a rewarding little thing that’s contributed to my doctoral work but also given me a bit of a break from it and a different way of thinking about sharing these stories about birds.”
