Seabird Changes, Tidal Forced Heat-Exchanging, and a Chain of Ocean Ecosystem Drivers.

by Thomas Robben, Stephen Broker, Shoon Nakajo Robben

Abstract

Thousands of Razorbill seabirds in late 2012 invaded Florida offshore waters for the first time ever. This paper verifies the uniqueness of this event, and suggests a possible source location (the northern Gulf of Maine GOM) for many of these errant birds. It hypothesizes a multi-step mechanism which could have enabled this invasion, including the extreme tidal mixing in the Bay of Fundy BOF acting as an unusually effective gas-liquid direct contact heat-exchanger, and finds evidence in the GOM for this multi-step hypothesis. Much of this evidence came from the RARGOM 2013 conference, with some new pieces of evidence having been discovered in 2014. Some economic impacts on the coupled human ecosystem are estimated.  Further testing of this hypothesis and continued collaboration between multiple disciplines is recommended going forward, including a shared central directory of key information, starting with the GOM.

Overview

The goals of this article were 1) to verify the uniqueness of the 2012 Razorbill invasion of Florida waters, 2) to hypothesize possible causes for this unprecedented event, 3) to find at least one possible source location and the possible mechanism which triggered this Razorbill event, 4) to search for some evidence to support the hypothesis, and 5) to meet scientists and others who would collaborate with us on this and future investigations of seabirds and the marine ecosystem. We believe we made good progress on these five goals (including "connecting-these-dots") and thank all those who worked with us on this.


In late 2012 thousands of seabirds called Razorbills (Alca torda) left their normal range along the northeast continental shelf and invaded Florida offshore waters for the first time, ever! Florida bird observation records going back to 1900 and earlier showed nothing at all like this had happened previously. This unique event raised many questions. How big was this event? How unprecedented was it? Why did it happen? Will it happen again? Where did these birds come from? Is this event "telling us something", and what? Were there other changes correlated with this in 2012 or leading up to 2012? Did some other changes cause the Razorbill invasion?

Bird observers were the first to detect this surprising event, and to realize how unprecedented it was. They were also first to be concerned that it might signal something else, some change in the ocean, but what? To address this they needed a collaborative investigation with marine ornithologists and scientists from other disciplines. This investigation has started, but is a long way from completed. This article gives an update of some of the work and the discovery being done, trying to find a possible plausible chain of dependencies, hypothesizing what that chain might be, working backwards from Razorbills, back to the Atlantic Herrings which they eat, back to zooplankton which the herrings eat, back to photosynthetic phytoplankton which the zooplankton eat, back to ocean temperature changes, and back to air temperature changes. This investigation is looking for a "smoking gun", actually for a chain of them, and thanks to collaboration with scientists in different disciplines it looks like the hoped-for pieces of evidence are falling into place, at least enough for us to have a plausible working hypothesis.

What maybe unique in this paper is 1) its use of the complete Audubon Christmas Bird Counts (CBC) database to find a possible geographic source of the Florida Razorbills, by comparing Razorbill numbers on all CBC circles, going all the way back to 1900, and 2) its proposal of the Bay of Fundy's extreme tides as a major contributor to the above-average heating of the Gulf of Maine GOM and perhaps the western North Atlantic (see hypothesis point 3 below). Having found a possible source of some of these birds in the northern GOM (in and around the Grand Manan CBC circle, where Razorbill numbers were anomalously low in late 2012, and in the adjacent Bay Of Fundy BOF), we sought other data from that particular area which might confirm the hypothesis, including 2012 water temperature, plankton, and especially a 2012 reduction in fish abundance which might be causal in driving some of the Razorbills in that area to seek other areas for food. We found evidence for each link in that chain (much of it from the RARGOM 2013 conference), plus recently discovering a striking 2012 drop in Atlantic Herrings caught in the fisheries in and around the Grand Manan area that year. We interpret this chain of evidence as supporting our hypothesis.

We are thankful for helpful collaboration from amateur bird observers, professional ornithologists, marine biologists, other marine scientists, the fishing community, the National Audubon Society, NOAA, and many other contributors/organizations. We benefited from this growing cooperation and hope it continues to grow, including a new central directory to the locations of relevant information across these domains, as suggested at the end of this article.

Hypothesis

Are Seabirds Changing? Are the Oceans Changing?

Are seabirds and oceans changing? Why? How? What are the relationships? Are some ocean changes causing some seabird changes? Are seabirds good indicators of ocean changes? Is there anything we should do, can do? This paper looks at some seabird changes, especially the highly visible Razorbill changes, and hypothesizes the mechanism for this, and then searches for some published evidence which might support the hypothesis.

The working hypothesis consists of the following points:

1. The planetary atmosphere is warming, on the average, although we will not try to explain why... that is outside the scope of this article.
2. Atmospheric warming (along with plenty of sunlight) leads to ocean warming. Some percent of the atmospheric heat is absorbed by the ocean. There is an exchange and equilibrium of heat (and gases) between the atmosphere and the ocean.
3. Areas of abnormally high tidal mixing (such as the Bay of Fundy)  are able to absorb more "excess" atmospheric heat (which upsets the thermal equilibrium between the atmosphere and the seawater) more rapidly than most of the ocean, acting as an unusually effective gas-liquid direct contact heat-exchanger, partly because of the extreme tidal turnover, breaking thermal stratifications, bringing up cold waters from the deep and exposing it to the increasingly hot air, to absorb an unusually large percent of that abnormal heat from the air and circulate it rapidly down to the depths, and then tidally to transport it (200 billion tons of water) out to the wider Gulf Of Maine twice daily. Most other areas of the ocean rely on natural convection and will not have this extreme tidal mixing (forced convection), and will be able to absorb less of the excess and increasing atmospheric heat. This mechanism may be a significant contributor to the above-average 2012 warming of the Gulf of Maine and the nearby western North Atlantic.
4. Ocean warming changes many marine components, including causing unusually early spring phytoplankton blooms, as in 2012.
5. These changing phytoplankton blooms may be too-early for optimum zooplankton utilization, reducing the zooplankton's success and abundance in some areas, in some months.
6. Zooplankton reductions impact its many predators which depend directly upon it, such as larger zooplankton, small fish and some smaller seabirds. Reductions in small and larval fish (such as sand lance, capelin, hake and especially Atlantic herring, which is the Razorbill's primary prey species) reduce the breeding success of many seabirds, including Razorbill (Alca torda), and may reduce Cod and the larger fish which prey on the small fish and their larvae.
7. Razorbills are a very "dispersive" species ( see Gaston & Woo, 2008 article ), and strike out in search of new feeding grounds when their supplies of small fish are greatly reduced. That makes them an unusually good "indicator species", quickly reflecting changes in their environment.
8. Some Razorbills, some of which are normally year-round permanent residents in the warmer southern end of their range (including some in the GOM Gulf Of Maine), experienced a lack of suitable food items for the first time in their life, and headed south for the first time, looking to find food. Additionally, some more northerly Razorbills which normally would winter in the GOM probably found few herrings there in December and kept migrating south, ending up in Florida waters.
9. With little experience with such winter movements, however, this subset of the Razorbill population once moving south found little food and did not know when to stop. Their dispersive tendencies pushed them to travel  further south until they reached Florida and Gulf of Mexico waters, with many probably dying there from lack of enough suitable food.
10. The following year (2013) there were many fewer Razorbills to report on Christmas Bird Counts, from the southern edge of their normal range (because so many of the birds from this permanent resident population had migrated to Florida and probably perished over the 2012-2013 winter).

Learning more about this marine ecosystem and its interdependencies will help us test this multi-point hypothesis and more generally understand, anticipate and adapt to the many changes in our global and local environment. Birder observers, the fishing community and marine scientists of all kinds are collaborating more to advance our understanding of and preparedness for these changes. Birders can do this as "citizen scientists" or simply by contributing their field observations to eBird, Christmas Bird Counts, etc.  As our environment continues to change, it is more important than ever that we work together on these matters.

Method

To verify that the 2012 Razorbill movement was unprecedented we used some eBird data but mostly relied upon an analysis of the entire National Audubon Society database of all CBC Christmas Bird Counts, going back 114 years to 1900, including every Razorbill ever reported on any CBC, in both the USA, Canada and France (2 CBCs in the French-owned Saint-Pierre et Miquelon Islands have reported Razorbills!).

After this CBC analysis pointed toward the northern Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy as one possible source of many of the Razorbills which wintered in and around Florida, we focused the next steps on that GOM/BOF area...

To verify our working hypothesis and its chain of correlated changes, we searched for any published or personally communicated data showing 2012 numbers which supported the hypothesis, and its multiple points. Data for 2012 is relatively recent and some of it is unpublished thus far, but the October 2013 RARGOM Annual Science Meeting had several relevant presentations and papers which provided 2012 data which was found to directly support the hypothesis. Other 2012 data was found during our 2014 search and networking with researchers, and it strengthened the hypothesis.

The result of this approach is a partially verified and testable working hypothesis which can be verified further as more 2012 data (about multiple components of the marine ecosystem in the GOM/BOF area) becomes available over the next few years.

2014 Seabird Changes

The 2012 Razorbill event is far from the only unusual seabird event of the last few years.

Recent seabird changes have included several unusual seabird records....
Until two years ago Northern Gannet, an Atlantic seabird, had never been seen in the Pacific Ocean, anywhere. Then one showed up a few miles off the San Francisco coast on the Farallon Islands.  Until this year, Fea's Petrel had never been seen in Massachusetts waters. Until this year Trinidade Petrel had never been reported in Maine. Until this year, Ancient Murrelet had never been seen in the East Coast of the USA. Until this year Tufted Puffin had not been seen along the East Coast since Audubon had one in 1831. And until late 2012 only 16 Razorbills had ever been reported in Florida waters, and then thousands appeared there in a dramatic unprecedented departure from their known history (as described in the sections below)!

Additionally, this year Central America had the first-ever Waved Albatross and the first-ever Inca Terns, plus a Gray Gull in Panama.  Thousands of starved dead seabirds are washing up on the beaches of Chile and Peru in the last few weeks, perhaps caused by an unusually strong ENSO El Nino Southern Oscillation starting to develop.

These are not the typical fluctuations in bird numbers and movements which we usually see from year-to-year and decade-to-decade, with or without El Nino. Are these very unusual seabird movements indicating something else in the larger marine ecosystem which is changing?

2012 Seabird Changes: Razorbills

WHERE DID THE 2012 RAZORBILLS GO TO? AND WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?

Razorbills are rarely seen south of the Carolinas in winter, and never more than a few, but in late 2012 thousands of them invaded Florida coastal waters for a first-ever event in the US history of bird observations. Here is an un-doctored photograph of Miami Beach FL (thanks to birder and photographer Trey Mitchell), which shows several of the thousands of Razorbills that reached Florida waters in late 2012....

The following range map (from birds.audubon) shows the normal range of Razorbills in North America, over the last fifty years, as that species slowly edged further south in winter off the US east coast, partly as it recovered from many decades of human harvesting it for food on and around its breeding grounds. Note that a few birds are normally seen in winter off North Carolina, and even fewer occasionally seen off South Carolina. Furthermore, prior to 2012, Florida birders had recorded a total of only 16 Razorbills ever seen in that state (as per the Florida ornithological state records committee, Jon Greenlaw), and all were single birds, accidentals/vagrants, far south of their normal winter range.

After this 2012 irruption of Razorbills down to Florida we wanted to learn more about the changing numbers and distribution of Razorbills over multiple decades, so we asked National Audubon Society (NAS) for a subset of the complete CBC Christmas Bird Count database, for every report of every Razorbill since 1900, on every CBC circle in all countries covered (mostly the USA and Canada).  Our goal was to see how Razorbills had been changing their winter movements and numbers along the US and Canadian coast. We wanted to find CBC circles with many decades of Razorbills reported, with large enough numbers of birds so that we could have some confidence that their changing numbers meant something.

We received this subset database (thanks to NAS) and found that 195,836 razorbills had been seen, on 178 different CBCs, since 1900. We reorganized this data, spreading it out, one column per year, for easier viewing...
CBC time series for Razorbill numbers: one row per CBC circle
which we then aggregated by state/province...
CBC time series for Razorbill numbers: aggregated by state/province

The following table is aggregated by state/province. The rightmost 4 columns are single years, being compared against decades of ten years in the columns on the left.
NOTE: you can expand any image by clicking on it. Then press ESC key or back arrow to return.

This is an interesting summary, aggregated by state/province, and clearly the total number of Razorbills reported is growing, but the data is hard to interpret, partly because of the continually growing number of CBC circles, partly because many CBCs are not run every consecutive year, partly because the field "effort" changes every year as different number of people participate, partly because the weather varies from year to year, partly because Razorbills have been increasing significantly since 1900 (for example, see the plot below, where the Montauk NY numbers have been growing since the 1990s), etc. On the other hand, these sightings are limited/standardized to a one-day CBC count, and the number of observers have not increased that much, so it is pretty clear that Razorbills have increased at Montauk NY since the early 1990s (prior to 1990 almost every red dot below reflects single-digit counts of Razorbills, while since 1990 only three of those more recent red dots reflect counts of less than ten birds)....

And if all Razorbill reports for all CBCs since 1900 are plotted (note that the vertical scale is a log scale), it is clear that those total numbers of Razorbills seen are growing over the decades...

Because of all these confounding factors, however, we decided to take a different approach, selecting a subset of the 178 circles which would give us the best data-set for analysis. We eliminated most of these 178 CBC circles because of any one of the following reasons:   the CBC had not been run for enough consecutive years to give us a long time series, the CBC had not been run in recent years, less than 500 total razorbills had ever been reported in that CBC, or the numbers were so sparse or sporadic as to seem meaningless. This left us with about 23 CBCs, the majority of which had the most Razorbills reported over longer periods of time, all along the East Coast  (with a total of 170,799 birds reported over the years -- so with just 13% of the 178 counts we kept 87% of the 195 thousand birds)....
CBC time series for Razorbill numbers 2
These 23 CBCs are shown in the following image, showing the last 25 years of their razorbill numbers. This image (and any image at this website) can be expanded if you click on it...

There were 30 CBCs north of Grand Manan Island which reported a few razorbills, but it appears that the vast majority of razorbills winter from Grand Manan south (or offshore away from CBCs), including the nearby Brier Island on the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of Fundy. Cape Ann has a good number of razorbills, as do most of the CBCs around the Cape Cod area. "The islands" (Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Tuckernuck and Block Island) have good numbers of razorbills, as does Montauk NY. The best razorbill numbers south of Montauk are at NCWI, the Wilmington, North Carolina CBC.

South of NCWI typically there are few if any razorbills reported on CBCs, at least until 2012, when the NCSB (Southport-Bald Head-Oak Islands, North Carolina) CBC jumped to 360, and the FLDC (Miami-Dade County) CBC jumped to 600 from never ever having any razorbill reported!  Also not shown on this table is the 2012 first-time appearance of a few razorbills on 2 Georgia and 15 other Florida CBCs (plus 5 more if we allow for count-week birds). In other words, the analysis of all the CBCs confirms that the 2012 December migration of Razorbills to Florida waters was a first-time unprecedented event, at least going back 112 years to 1900! Confirming this was the primary goal of this analysis, and these Christmas Bird Count numbers leave no doubt.

So this Florida invasion was indeed a "hundred year event", at least, and it might actually be a "thousand year event" or perhaps a totally unprecedented movement of MANY Razorbills down to Florida for the first time ever. Regardless of this distinction, the movement was significant enough for many people to be concerned about it, and to want to understand it better.

Additionally, can we look at this table to hypothesize where these razorbills might have come from? Where is the source of these Florida birds?  Comparing the 2011 and 2012 numbers of birds, the largest CBC declines come from NBGM (the Grand Manan CBC, 1605 down to 5 birds) and NSBI (Brier Island, 3556 down to 936 birds). This suggests that some of the Florida razorbills may have come from this area, in the north end of the Gulf of Maine, around the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. Of course the CBC circles do not cover all of the range of the Razorbills, but for the subset they do cover, these numbers suggest that birds which normally winter in the northern GOM had declined during the winter, probably moving further south, reflected by increased numbers in CBCs from MA south, and in large numbers reaching Florida for the first time ever. This suggests where (around Grand Manan and Brier Island) we might want to look for correlated changes or causes of this razorbill irruption, and this is discussed in a later section of this article. What might have been the conditions in this area which might have caused the birds to depart?  What was going on in the Brier Island and the Grand Manan Island areas in the 2010, 2011, 2012 time frame? And was that any different from what was happening in Maine and Massachusetts waters in those years, where Razorbills also congregate in the winter?

As if to confirm the theory that some of the Florida Razorbills came from this northern GOM area, Eric Mills wrote in "Nova Scotia Birds" quarterly  ( Mills, 2013 p.28 ), "...in early December [2012] it was clear that something was going on with RAZORBILLS. Sea-watching then revealed a steady passage of southward-bound birds in early December, after which numbers were relatively low through the end of February." This included watching Razorbills depart the BrierIsland part of the northern GOM area which is part of the GrandManan/BrierIsland/BOF area we are emphasizing in this paper (because that is where the Razorbills declined the most on the 2012 CBCs).

Finally, look at row 5 of this table, showing the total number of razorbills for these 23 counts. Look at the totals for 2007 through 2013:  2025, 4946, 6453, 7333, 9909, 9642,  and 1719. Notice the steady build-up from around 2000 to over 9000 birds.   Notice the "conservation" of numbers (9909 to 9642) between 2011 and 2012, even though some of the birds re-distributed themselves down to Florida.  And then notice, unfortunately, the total number plunge from 9642 in 2012 down to 1719 the next year (an 82% loss!), suggesting that many razorbills perished during the winter of 2012, as might be expected, due to their migration to Florida where they may have had trouble finding suitable food! All these numbers seem consistent with the hypothesis.

Lets look at this one more way, using eBird data from the last several years, comparing all Razorbills reported to eBird for the three months of December, January & February. The three maps below show 2011-2012, 2012-2013 (the winter of the Razorbill irruption to Florida), and then 2013-2014. Clearly the Razorbill southern distribution in the winter of 2012-2013 (the map in the middle of the three below) was very different (including many reports from Florida waters) from the winter before or after that year (click on the image below to enlarge it)...

MAPS SHOWING THE GRAND MANAN / BRIER ISLAND AREA:


After studying all the numbers, we focused most attention on two CBC circles, NBGM (a breeding colony of Razorbills) and nearby NSBI.

We looked for Razorbill numbers in all the CBC circles in this region (each green circle is a CBC circle) and beyond (click on the image to expand it)...

and we found the vast majority of Razorbills were concentrated in CBC circles in the greater Gulf of Maine area, especially at the NSBI Brier Island (the lower yellow circle, in Nova Scotia) and even more in NBGM Grand Manan Island (the upper yellow circle along the New Brunswick mainland) CBC circles (click on the image to expand it)...

Here are these two key CBC circles at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy with its extreme tides (Grand Manan is in New Brunswick, just east of the US/Canadian border, and Brier Island is in Nova Scotia), at the interface to the central part of the GOM Gulf Of Maine (click on the image to expand it)...

The following map shows the greater Gulf Of Maine Area (sometimes called GOMA), including all waters inside the red line. Grand Manan Island (the upper red circle) is at the western edge of the Bay of Fundy, just east of the US/Canada boundary, while Brier Island is at the west end of NS Nova Scotia (the lower red circle) (click on the image to expand it)...

RAZORBILLS ARE "DISPERSIVE" AND A GOOD INDICATOR SPECIES:

It is clear that Razorbills in late 2012 increased in Florida waters, while their numbers were smaller than usual in the two CBC circles as the mouth of the Bay Of Fundy. Were these Razorbill changes in response to some environmental changes?  Observations in the Arctic ( Gaston & Woo, 2008 and see the map below) suggest that Razorbills are a good "indicator species" because they are very "dispersive" in response to changes in their environment, especially to changes in Sand Lance and other fish they prefer to eat, such as Herring. This tendency could support the hypothesis, and we will look into fish changes in the next section.

Changes in Other Marine Ecosystem Components (Ocean Changes)

While Razorbills are changing, what else is changing? Is the ocean changing? What might be correlated with the Razorbill changes? What might be causing or driving those changes, at least partly? Lets look for correlations of Razorbill numbers and various ecosystem components over time, in approximately the same geographic area.  Lets look at a range of possible factors, in this Gulf Of Maine area, including the human ecosystem and the natural marine ecosystem which Razorbills are a part of. Lets start with this super-simplified diagram which shows a number of possible factors:

Click to enlarge this image.

Our hypothesis is that the Razorbill changes, especially in 2012, were correlated with, and probably driven by, a chain of marine ecosystem component changes, starting with warming in the atmosphere, warming of the seawater (accelerated by the extreme tidal turnover in the Bay of Fundy), changes in phytoplankton, changes in zooplankton, and then changes in Atlantic Herring, Sand Lance and similar small fish which Razorbills depend upon. The following sections present some evidence of these changes.

WATER TEMPERATURE:

It appears that the 2012 ocean temperature was much higher than normal in the GOM (Gulf Of Maine), as per the following four studies. More generally, the western North Atlantic has recently warmed. The specific cause(s) of this warming trend is still being debated, but the evidence of the trend is strong.

• The year 2012 was abnormally warm across a wide area of the Northwest Atlantic, including the Canadian Shelf.  "2012 was a record warm year in air and ocean temperatures in the Maritimes region" [including GOM] ( Johnson, 2013 ).

• There was a clear warming in the Northeast US Coastal Ocean in 2012, including the GOM ( Chen, 2013 ) . Ke Chen (WHOI) argues that the 2012 warming was caused by the atmosphere and likely related to a strongly positive NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation).

• This anomalousness of the 2012 warming was also observed by the array of NERACOOS buoys which have been deployed in the GOM since 2001 ( Morrison et al, 2013 ).

The above two slides from K.Mills, "The 2012 northwest Atlantic heat wave"

• The month of May 2012 was especially warm, relative to previous years ( Gawarkiewicz, 2013 ). Click on this image to enlarge it and then notice that the darkest red (highest heat anomaly) is in the extreme tidal waters coming out of the Bay of Fundy, near Grand Manan Island NB, and wrapping around the south coast of Nova Scotia...

• Perhaps most surprising was the study by H.Koopman et al of the rapid DEEP water ocean warming in the Bay of Fundy (down 230m to the bottom of the BoF)... ( Koopman et al, 2013 ), "The 2.5°C increase throughout the deeper part of the water column was much more profound, given the enormous thermal input required to heat this well mixed, tidally driven system." "In the BoF, 2012 was indeed much warmer than previous years, as it was in the GoM, but in addition, bottom temperatures had been steadily increasing by ~ 0.6°C per year since 2008."  This seems to support our hypothesis point 3 about the Bay Of Fundy's extremely high tidal turnover enabling abnormally high rapid absorption of excess heat from the atmosphere. Where the atmosphere/ocean mean heat equilibrium gets out of balance (e.g., mean air temperature warms up anomalously.... or cools anomalously!), that area will move most rapidly back towards a new equilibrium where the "heat-exchanger" function is most active, such as BoF.
• 
  
• The following diagram (from Edson, 1999 ) shows some of the processes that govern the transfer of heat, mass, and momentum within the coupled boundary layers between the atmosphere and the ocean. The analysis of some of these factors, in the articles below, seems to support the hypothesis.

Click to enlarge.

• There have been studies which found that tidal mixing could increase the heat-exchange between atmosphere and ocean, in this case cooling ocean waters, supporting the tidal-heat-transfer hypothesis, such as Moon 2005: "In the YECS [Yellow and East China Seas] the tides affect not only wind waves, but also seasonal circulation and water-mass distributions. Tides increase the bottom friction of the YECS significantly and this contributes to a change of winter current direction up to 60 °C in the YECS and a decrease of surface temperatures along the trough of the Yellow Sea up to 4 °C in winter. Tides in summer produce the strong vertical mixing in shallow regions. This leads to the formation of tidal fronts in a boundary between well-mixed and stratified regions and causes sea surface temperatures (SST) along the west coast of Korea decrease as much as 3 °C. "
• A computer simulation of induced tidal mixing showed significant impacts on ocean temperature, and climate ( Muller, 2010 ): " We implemented an explicit forcing of the complete lunisolar tides into an ocean model which is part of a coupled atmosphere–hydrology–ocean–sea ice model. An ensemble of experiments with this climate model shows that the model is significantly affected by the induced tidal mixing and nonlinear interactions of tides with low frequency motion. The largest changes occur in the North Atlantic where the ocean current system gets changed on large scales. In particular, the pathway of the North Atlantic Current is modified resulting in improved sea surface temperature fields compared to the non-tidal run. " This is supportive of our hypothesis that forced tidal mixing can impact the wider ocean, including currents and temperatures. This modeling even suggested impacts upon the North Atlantic Current.

PLANKTON:

It appears these 2012 warm temperatures impacted both the photosynthetic phytoplankton and also the zooplankton, such as the important copepod Calanus finmarchicus.

• The GOM phytoplankton bloomed very early in 2012 and very late in 2013. The GOM phytoplankton bloom magnitude was also unusually low in 2013, which led to an extremely low 2013 zooplankton bio-volume.  Early spring blooms (such as 2012 in GOM) occur before zooplankton can fully utilize them. Late blooms are better utilized by zooplankton, thus bloom energy enters pelagic food webs. This suggests a low biomass of zooplankton in 2012 GOM ( Friedland, 2013 ). Note that the 2013 spring bloom started later than usual, and was so small that biologists were not able to define a spring phytoplankton bloom for 2013, which led to a low zooplankton biomass...

• Heather Koopman also reported 2012's uniquely warm waters, in the GOM between Grand Manan NB and Brier Island NS,  and (on slide 17) the incredibly low Calanus abundances in the Bay of Fundy in 2013 ( Koopman et al, 2013 and Koopman et al, 2014 )...

FISH & OTHER NEKTON:

There are many factors which make it very difficult to measure the abundance of fish, and these are well covered in the excellent article by David E. Richardson ( Richardson, 2014 ).

The 2012 numbers are also generally not available yet (for at least another year) in the major fish stock assessments, such as....

Northeast Fisheries Science Center Reference Document 12-18 54th Northeast Regional Stock Assessment Workshop (54th SAW) Assessment Report

54th Northeast Regional Stock Assessment Workshop (54th SAW)... 604 pages
www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1218/crd1218.pdf

www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1218/parta.pdf

Even as we wait for more 2012 fish data to be published, the following pieces of evidence became available:

• The 2012 development timing of Atlantic Herring in Cobscook Bay ME and the GOM waters off Eastport ME was shown to be anomalous compared to 2011 and 2013. This was probably due to the warmer air & water temperatures in 2012, the unusually early plankton bloom, the herring growing sooner in the year, possibly making them larger than the ideal size for the Razorbills during the May/June breeding time, and by August and September 2012 there were almost no herrings left for the alcids to eat ( Vieser et al, 2013 ).  This chain of events may have been a factor in the Razorbills unprecedented southern movement to Florida.

• Glen Gawarkiewicz ( Gawarkiewicz, 2013 ) and his WHOI team did a study of ocean temperature and fish in the waters about 30miles NNE of Cape Hatteras (transect along 36 degrees N), comparing May 2012 against a similar study done in May 1996. They found the 2012 waters to be almost 5 celsius degrees warmer and the fish to be different (the anticipated bluefish and butterfish were not seen, while the more southerly blue runner and amberjack were more prevalent).

• Laurie Murison (Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station, Executive Director) said, "There have been many things happening in the BOF/GOM over the last five years including warming temperatures, herring staying in deep water probably because of warmer temperatures, lack of phytoplankton and zooplankton" (personal communication, 2014 july 18). Note that herring staying deeper in the water of the Bay Of Fundy and Gulf Of Maine suggests that they will probably be harder for Razorbills to catch.

• Thanks to David Richardson in 2014 we were able to find the following herring landings data for the Grand Manan general area.  The 2012 herring numbers from fish weirs along the New Brunswick side of the GOM and BOF are available, and confirm a historically low number of herrings in 2012! See  "2013 Assessment of 4VWX Herring" ( DFO, 2013 See Figure 16, page 15).   "Landings in New Brunswick weir and shut-off fishery were down dramatically from 10,958t in 2010, to 3,711t in 2011 and 504t in 2012. The 2012 catch is the lowest in the history of the fishery."  Weirs are relatively fixed structures ( Bay of Fundy, Old Fishing Techniques - YouTube ) and their year to year numbers should be somewhat comparable, if only because weirs are immobile and stay in the same location every year. Click on this link to see a weir in the Bay of Fundy, Bay of Fundy Blog: Bay of Fundy weir fishing FAQs

• These weir landings popped back up in 2013 to about 6,000 tones, but still far below the long-term average of 23,560 tones....  "4VWX Herring 2014 Update Report" ( DFO, 2014 ).  The following map shows the SW New Brunswick weir fishery area, which coincides approximately with the Grand Manan CBC Christmas Bird Count area. Can it be coincidence that in 2012 in this area both Razorbills and migrant juvenile Atlantic herrings (the Razorbills' primary prey species) were at historic low numbers? This correlation is strong and suggests causality.

Atlantic Herring is the primary food for Razorbills (Sand Lance, also a Razorbill favorite, are more local, mostly around shallow sandy bottoms, such as areas around the Stellwagen Bank), and the herrings' greatly decreased GOM numbers in 2012 seem correlated with the departure of Razorbills in 2012 from northern GOM waters, supporting the hypothesis proposed in this article.



FISHING COMMUNITY ECONOMICS & IMPACT:

The human community in SW New Brunswick benefits from the herring weir fisheries.  If we assume the revenue from one tone (t) of herrings is about $1,000 (from an economic analysis done in Alaska) then the long term average of 23,560 t per year provided $23,560,000 annually, while the 504 t in 2012 provided $504,000 which implies a net loss in 2012 of $23,056,000 or a 97.9% reduction that year. Of course this reduction in herrings also reduced the Cod and other fish which prey upon herrings, leading to an additional human impact in the commercial Cod fishing business in and around the Gulf of Maine.

This is one example of the interdependencies and cross impacts between the human system and the natural ecosystem. Viewed together, with interconnections, these are called the CHANS Coupled Human And Natural Systems, and to understand some of the changes happening we need to keep this wider more comprehensive perspective in mind, being aware of the many ways the human and natural components can affect each other.

Conclusion

We have found evidence that some seabirds, especially Razorbills, are changing, and experienced a dramatic unprecedented extension of their winter range in late 2012, and probably suffered a large loss of population that winter. We have found evidence of changes in the ocean, especially water temperature, plankton, and several fish species. We have found some apparent correlations between Razorbill changes and changes in other components of their marine ecosystem. We have found some fish data supporting our hypothesis, but hope to find more as it becomes available publicly (2012 is a recent year, and some of that data is not yet published).  We have not done a rigorous statistical analysis on the data which we do have (partly because the data we have it is not very standardized/normalized), and we cant yet prove any causality, but we are getting a more complete picture of what probably happened in 2012, at least in the northern GOM, around Grand Manan and the Bay Of Fundy. At least we are heading toward a plausible theory, one which can hopefully be tested more over the next few years with more data, research and analysis. We have an increased communication and collaboration with marine scientists in various areas. And we have an improved understanding of the marine ecosystem in the GOM, including one of our favorite seabirds, Razorbill, the closest relative of the Great Auk, which went extinct around 1850.

Having a better evidence-based understanding of our natural and human ecosystems may also help us if society has to make some future decisions to help our environment stay in balance.

Recommendation

This study suggests that there is value in comparing and relating seabird data with other marine ecosystem data. Some of this seabird data is contributed by "amateur bird watchers", via Christmas Bird Counts, eBird, and other means. Other marine data is contributed by scientists and fishermen, and in many forms, some of which may not be well known or easy to find. Birders, ornithologists, fishermen and marine scientists all have their different experiences of the marine world, and sometimes keep their data and knowledge in different places. As our environment changes now may be a good time for all these stakeholders to document all (or most of) their relevant data resources (including the new marine data portals which are emerging), in one catalog, a kind of directory with links pointing to most data sources, at least starting with the GOM and nearby areas. The authors of this report will be happy to work with others to develop that shared resource, that multi-purpose catalog/directory or perhaps to augment an existing one. Please let us know if you would like to partner on this.

A second recommendation is to take more people out on a new kind of "pelagic trip", where more birders and others could get first hand experience with all major aspects of the ocean ecosystem, including all the factors in this article. Such trips could be led by a marine scientist in addition to bird watchers knowledgeable about seabirds. We need to get a much larger core of people understanding what is changing in the ocean, and for them to have a direct personal experience with it. We request any marine scientists interested in creating such ocean trips to contact us.

Robben99 AT gmail DOT com

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to W.Petersen and S.Broker, without whom this article would not exist.

A. Allyn:
P. Auster.
M. Bachman.
S. Broker
P.A. Buckley
A. Collins.
P. Comins.
K. Dale.
T. Davis
A. Diamond.
P. Didier
K. Friedland
A. Gaston.
G. Gawarkiewicz.
M. Gochfeld.
J. Greenlaw
J. Hickey
E. Hirshberg
M. Huang:
G. Hunt.
D. Ingersoll.
L. Kaufman.
D. Larson.
G. LeBaron.
M. Lyman:
P. Lynch:
F. Mantlik:
M. Martin:
E. Mills.
T. Mitchell.
M. Moore.
K. Mueller
L. Murison.
B. Nikula
W. Petersen.
K. Powers.
N. Proctor.
D. Richardson.
A. Runfola.
M. Salett.
D. Simpson.
A. Thomas
M. Thompson:
G. Tudor
J. Vieser.
L. Wahle
J. Wilson.
P. Wolter:
A. Zemba: