Common murres collected in Alaska from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2016 and shipped to USGS National Wildlife Health Center for cause of death determination

Dates

Publication Date: 2019-10-22
Start Date: 2015-01-01
End Date: 2016-12-31

Citation

Bodenstein, B., 2019, Common murres collected in Alaska from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2016 and shipped to USGS National Wildlife Health Center for cause of death determination: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9O4Y5EO.

Summary

About 62,000 dead or dying common murres (Uria aalge), the trophically dominant fish-eating seabird of the North Pacific, washed ashore between summer 2015 and spring 2016 on beaches from California to Alaska. Most birds were severely emaciated and, so far, no evidence for anything other than starvation was found to explain this mass mortality. Three-quarters of murres were found in the Gulf of Alaska and the remainder along the West Coast. Total mortality was estimated at 0.54 to 1.2 million birds. About two-thirds of murres killed were adults, a substantial blow to breeding populations. Additionally, 22 complete reproductive failures were observed at multiple colonies region-wide during (2015) and after (2016-2017) the mass mortality [...]

Summary

About 62,000 dead or dying common murres (Uria aalge), the trophically dominant fish-eating seabird of the North Pacific, washed ashore between summer 2015 and spring 2016 on beaches from California to Alaska. Most birds were severely emaciated and, so far, no evidence for anything other than starvation was found to explain this mass mortality. Three-quarters of murres were found in the Gulf of Alaska and the remainder along the West Coast. Total mortality was estimated at 0.54 to 1.2 million birds. About two-thirds of murres killed were adults, a substantial blow to breeding populations. Additionally, 22 complete reproductive failures were observed at multiple colonies region-wide during (2015) and after (2016-2017) the mass mortality event. Die-offs and breeding failures occur sporadically in murres, but the magnitude, duration and spatial extent of this die-off, associated with multi-colony and multi-year reproductive failures, is unprecedented and astonishing. These events co-occurred with the most powerful marine heatwave on record that persisted through 2014-2016 and created an enormous volume of ocean water (the “Blob”) from California to Alaska with temperatures that exceeded average by 2-3 standard deviations. Other studies indicate that this prolonged heatwave reduced primary production and restructured zooplankton communities in favor of lower-calorie species, while it simultaneously increased metabolically driven food demands of ectothermic forage fish. In response, forage fish quality and quantity diminished. Similarly, large ectothermic groundfish increased their demand for forage fish, resulting in greater top-predator demands for diminished forage fish resources. We hypothesize that these bottom-up and top-down forces created an “ectothermic vise” on forage species leading to their system-wide scarcity and resulting in mass mortality of murres and many other fish, bird and mammal species in the region during 2014-2017. This was the largest climate-induced perturbation of North Pacific pelagic food webs since the 1976 regime shift.

Contacts

Point of Contact :: Barbara L Bodenstein
Process Contact :: USGS National Wildlife Health Center
Originator :: Barbara L Bodenstein
Metadata Contact :: Barbara L Bodenstein
Publisher :: U.S. Geological Survey
Distributor :: U.S. Geological Survey - ScienceBase
SDC Data Owner :: National Wildlife Health Center
USGS Mission Area :: Ecosystems

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Bodenstein_murres_metadata.xml Original FGDC Metadata	View	35.55 KB	application/fgdc+xml
AK COMU 2015-2016 chemistry results.csv		5.94 KB	text/csv
AK COMU 2015-2016 microbiology results.csv		2.45 KB	text/csv
AK COMU 2015-2016 murre submissions.csv		14.72 KB	text/csv
AK COMU 2015-2016 parasitology results.csv		4.33 KB	text/csv
AK COMU 2015-2016 virology results.csv		14.54 KB	text/csv

Related External Resources

Type: Related Primary Publication

Piatt JF, Parrish JK, Renner HM, Schoen SK, Jones TT, Arimitsu ML, et al. (2020) Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0226087. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226087	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226087

Purpose

These data were collected to better understand the cause of a large die-off of common murres. Data provided in this release are necropsy specimens that were evaluated at the U.S. Geological Survey, National Wildlife Health Center.

Common murres collected in Alaska from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2016 and shipped to USGS National Wildlife Health Center for cause of death determination

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