The distribution and abundance of small, schooling forage fish (e.g., sandlance, capelin) in Alaska is knownfrom small-scale directed studies, but mostly inferred from incidental catches in large-scale trawl surveysthat were not designed (by gear or location) to sample forage species. In contrast, seabirds are conspicuous,highly mobile, samplers of forage fish that go to great distances (100+ km) and depths ( 200m) to locateephemeral prey with great efficiency. Thus, data on their dietary habits provides a valuable complement totraditional fisheries sampling. We propose to analyze large diet databases for three abundant seabirds(puffins, murres and kittiwakes) to: 1) characterize forage fish communities in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA)and Bering Sea/Aleutians, 2) describe temporal changes in abundance of forage species, and, 3) examinethe possibility of using diet data to assess recruitment in selected species. We will also examine 20-30 yeartime-series of seabird breeding success and phenology at several colonies to determine: .1) whether theseparameters can be used to make inferences about local forage fish stocks (abundance or timing), and 2)whether these seabird data co-vary with the prey base data at similar time/distance scales.
