 And this is Bill Graben, welcoming you all on behalf of the Board of Directors of York County Audubon. We're delighted to have you here tonight for what has become our monthly Zoom program. This is not anything we planned in the years past. We look forward to the day when we can welcome you again to in person programs. But until that day arrives, we are we are grateful to whoever did the coding to create Zoom so that we could bring programs to you, whoever those nameless people are. Tonight, our program is entitled Seabird Sentinels in the Gulf of Maine, what they can tell us about the state of our oceans. And our presenter is Dr. Donald Lyons. And many of you are no doubt quite familiar with the basic outlines of the how seabirds have fared in the Gulf of Maine in the last century. By the middle of the 20th century, many populations of birds, seabird species were really decimated. And in the 1970s, Steve Kress came to Maine, working under the auspices of National Audubon Society. And he had the ambition to restore these populations and their habitat in Maine. And the process was very difficult at first for a number of years, very halted progress. But eventually, things got going in a good direction, thanks in large part to a tremendous number of innovative techniques that were developed here in Maine, to lure birds to the islands and encourage them to nest and reproduce there. And in fact, some of these techniques have now been used around the world for other threatened seabird populations. And it's been a tremendous success. And a year ago, Steve Kress retired. And we are so thankful that we have found not not your county Audubon, but this program has found a successor to him in Dr. Don Lyons. Don has spent his career working on seabirds around the country, around the world, and National Audubon and Maine Audubon and your county Audubon are so delighted to have him here to carry on this work. The threats are certainly as great now as they've ever been. And there's no time to take time off from doing the work that has been been done here. So at the end of the program, we will have a Q&A session. So if you have questions during the course of the program, please type them. Please hit the Q&A button at the lower center of your screen and type in your question. And we'll do our best to feed them to Don at the end of this program and give him a crack at them. So without further ado, we're delighted to have Don in Maine, and we're delighted to have him here with us tonight. Well, thank you so much, Bill. For the invitation, it's great honor to speak to your county Audubon and folks with Maine Audubon and from far and wide. And thanks, Nick, for all of your help in getting this program going. I'm going to work on sharing my screen. Let's see. And if I've done that right, you all should be looking at a slide with a very appealing Atlantic puffin on it. Looks good, Don. Thank you. So as Bill mentioned, I envisioned this talk to be focused on how seabirds are great sentinels of our ocean environment in the Gulf of Maine. When I was pulling slides together in the last few days, I actually kind of took a mental step back and wanted to think about seabirds more broadly than just the Gulf of Maine. So I'll start a little more broadly with the talk, and then bring it back to kind of more local challenges and successes here in Maine and then open it up for questions. I hope I've limited the number of slides so that we'll have a lot of time for questions. That's definitely my intent to have a little more interactive evening than just me talking and presenting to all of you. So probably all of us are familiar with the Canary in the coal mine story or idea where birds are incredible indicators of their environment, and in that way are very useful to us to understand the environment that we also live in and the effects on the environment that we may have in a coal mine that's a very novel environment. But in the marine environment where seabirds live, this is still very true as well. Birds are, of course, a great reflection of their environment, and so their status, their population welfare, their population abundance and trajectory are certainly a result of environmental conditions and how we're impacting those environmental conditions. And for seabirds, what we're noticing or what seabirds are telling us is that environmental conditions are changing rapidly, and for a large number of seabirds, those changes are not favorable. So over the last 70 years, sorry, over the last 70 years or so, seabirds have declined upwards of 70% in abundance in numbers. And by most categorizations, they're the most threatened group of birds. As many as one-third of all seabird species, which can run 400 or so depending on who's counting, are in some way threatened. The turn species, picture to me, upper right on your screen, is actually a Chinese crested turn. And it's a species that was actually thought to be extinct for over 60 years and is now, it was rediscovered about 20 years ago, but only around 100 adults currently are known. So it's a critically endangered species of bird. There's a lot of reasons for those declines, which I'm going to go through some of the more significant ones globally here on the next several slides. But climate change, which we all know is a problem for many species of wildlife, is certainly a challenge for seabirds and a growing challenge, of course. So that really adds to the causes that have driven this decline for so long. The majority of this decline seeing is not due to climate change, it's due to other factors. One last thought about seabird conservation in general is that it needs to happen in the marine environment where our conservation efforts are really still pretty early on. When you think about, for example, our National Wildlife Refuge System here in the United States or our National Park System here in the United States, the majority of those locations of those parks, of those refuges are set aside on land. We still have not really thought hard about protection of a comparable amount or comparable fraction of the water territory of the oceans that exist on the earth. And that includes both in territorial waters and the open ocean, which is not under the jurisdiction of any country. So seabirds exist out in places where there's much less conservation activity than what we're used to. And even though what we're used to on land is often insufficient, seabirds are kind of in an environment where we're devoting much less conscious thought to their conservation. But I wanted to go through some of the causes of decline that have been documented. And there's been a summary paper that was produced just last year 2019 that went through the major causes of mine for seabirds or the major threats for seabirds now. And there's three that are particularly acute. This listing had bycatches maybe slightly greater than the other two. So I'll start with that. But bycatch is generally a mortality cause that results when people fishing have gear that can inadvertently entice seabirds into an unfortunate demise. This is an albatross that was hooked on a long line fishing line. These long line fisheries use lines with thousands of hooks that are mild and the lines themselves are miles long. Bycatch to this fishery and others is not a particularly acute issue in the United States. Our fisheries management is generally relatively strong among the world. But globally protections against seabird bycatch in fisheries are much weaker. And so globally this is a pretty severe problem particularly for species like albatross that are drawn to fishing vessels to follow fishing vessels. And are prone to attempting to steal bait off of hooks as those lines are fed into the water. So a really serious problem globally one we definitely need to keep our eye on here in the US. But probably not as severe a problem for us at this time as it is elsewhere in the world. Another problem which historically has been the greatest problem for seabirds but is somewhat less severe these days is the challenge of introduced invasive species on seabird nesting islands. And the most common example of this is rats being introduced to islands inadvertently by people visiting islands that normally have not had much human traffic. The example I have photographed here and circled in that orange circle is actually mice. And this is a mouse on the head of an albatross on midway atoll on a US managed property in the Pacific Ocean. Of course famous for the battle of midway during World War II. More famous recently for wisdom, the albatross, the oldest known living wild bird. And that island unfortunately is overrun by house mice. And they are a new unknown species to albatross. Many albatross do not have what we would think of as normal defense mechanisms against them or even recognize them as a threat. And so they are able to climb on to birds to chew on adults who are focused on staying on their egg and incubating that egg and will not get up and leave that egg even though there is an annoyance of a mouse chewing on them. And this can eventually cause fatal consequences. It is not a huge problem for albatross at midway because there are multiple millions of lay sand and black footed albatross there. But this problem of mice and albatross happens elsewhere at islands where albatross populations are very small because of other reasons like bycatch for example. So the problem of invasive species is one that does hit us here in the US or in the lands we manage. And there's been several successful rodent removal programs on seabird islands but there are still far more islands to do to restore to native fauna to allow seabirds to thrive. So a very significant problem for seabirds globally and one that in particular locations within the US is a problem with us as well. Of course another major problem is climate change. And this is a growing problem. So of these three kind of top listed problems bycatch invasive species and climate change, climate change is definitely accelerating the most rapidly and appears to be the biggest problem in the future. And of course one example of the way climate change impacts seabirds is severe weather events. For example hurricanes along our Gulf Coast or Atlantic Coast that become much more energetic because they're traveling over very hot energetic water. The aerial image or satellite image is of Hurricane Hugo as it was hitting Texas. The two photos on the right on this slide are actually of an island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, Crab Bank Island. And this is a location where there was once a very thriving brown pelican colony and along with other seabirds, royal terns, black skimmers, common terns and others. And that island has been hit by numerous energetic storms. And in the lower photo you can see that it's little more than a sandbar and some associated wet marsh. And there are a few seabirds clinging to that sandbar that are attempting to nest but are often overwashed. So here's a direct effect of rising sea levels inundation from those waters coupled with storm events that are made worse by climate change. So this is just one aspect of climate change but a very serious one and a problem for seabirds and a growing problem as we move forward. Another problem that is maybe more historic for us in the United States but still a problem we need to keep our eye on and manage carefully is that of overfishing. And I've drawn a couple historical photos of bait fishing activity here in Maine for herring and sardine actually. And oftentimes in decades past seabirds and other predators were not really considered when trying to decide how much fish could be harvested or should be harvested. And that's something we're working to change and needs to be changed as predators like seabirds, like marine mammals, in particular whales such as the northern right whale which is critically endangered. And so we need to be very mindful of leaving enough food in the ocean for seabirds and other predators. And I'll touch on this a bit more in the talk as we go on. Certainly another problem which appears to be growing or certainly is growing is that a pollution and that can take a variety of forms. What I've chosen to give you some imagery for here on this slide is plastic pollution of course and I'm sure everyone is quite aware of that. A graphic example of impacts to seabirds is in these two photos and albatross are one of the more susceptible species to plastic ingestion. They typically do look for prey such as squid that are at the surface. Plastic, floating plastic debris can confuse them, can appear to be food and the adults will ingest that. It typically isn't a huge problem for adults. They can regurgitate it, cough it back up if they need to, but adults will come back to a colony after being away for days or even a week or two and regurgitate these plastic pieces to their chicks to feed their chicks. The chicks are often unable to cough this back up and that accumulating plastic debris takes up space in their stomach and they can consequently starve because they can't ingest any more real food from their parents. It's not an uncommon sight at some of the very large albatross colonies in the Pacific to see the carcasses of chicks like this one splayed out. These photos were also taken at midway and the chick, if the stomach has ruptured or if it's carefully opened, it's quite common to see abundant plastic debris in the stomach. A very sad problem in this case, but one that is a real challenge to deal with as well and probably growing. A challenge that's hopefully not growing is that of direct hunting of seabirds. It still happens in a few places in the world. The top center photo here is showing a puffin harvest in Iceland and there is still limited harvest there. Probably not very consequential harvest. Kind of the poster child for over hunting is the great awk and I have John James Audubon's print of the great awk there in the lower center portion of the slide. We do have an example that does hit as close to home even if it is historical. That's of course the use of birds in the millinery trade in the late 1800s. Basically feathers or even entire bird carcasses were used to adorn women's hats. That's of course one of the primary challenges that many Audubon societies were first formed to fight, to resolve or address. With the passage of the migratory bird treaty act early in the 20th century, significant progress was made on that front. In the U.S. hunting is not a very severe problem. There's a couple of issues with species that migrate to other places and can be harvested there, but not something that seems to be too pressing here for us in the U.S. But there is another challenge which does certainly occur in the United States and that's subsidized native species. Kind of the poster child for that is the various species of gulls we have along all of our coastlines. The gulls of course are incredibly smart birds, very adaptive, and very able to observe both other gulls and other species such as ourselves and identify food resources and identify human provided food sources such as in the top photo there an open landfill. That's certainly been a factor in the growth that was seen in gull populations during the 20th century. And those large numbers of gulls that resulted from having very abundant food largely took over many traditional seabird islands, many islands that often supported more rare species. This large central photo is a photo of Eastern Egg Rock in the, let's see, this would have been the 1970s when it was largely dominated by gulls and there were no puffins, there were no turns nesting there. So definitely a challenge, one that is under our control to a large degree if we can choose to manage the food resources that we make available to these species. So seabirds face a large number of challenges. I wanted to kind of work through that just as context for our situation here in Maine and in the Northeast. But I also want to contrast those challenges with some successes. And I hope that by the end of the talk I leave you with the understanding and the belief that people can make a difference. And I'll start right off by pointing out a couple of people who have. I'll start with William Dutcher. Many of you may not know that he was a co-founder of the National Auto on Society, which started out as a New York based organization. But he was also very prominent in the American Ornithological Union. And under his direction, one of the first conservation activities for birds. One of the first conservation activities that an Audubon Society put forth was right here in Maine at Matinicus Rock. William Dutcher saw to it that a bird warden was stationed at Matinicus Rock during the summer to help protect nesting seabirds there from would-be hunters. And maybe even the lighthouse operators, caretakers. But this was one of the first examples of seabird conservation in the country and conservation overall for birds. So definitely someone who was a trailblazer in that regard. Of course, as a bill mentioned earlier, another notable bird conservationist here in Maine is Steve Kress, who founded Project Puffin, the program that I now lead. And of course, is a hero for bringing back puffins to Maine. And I'll touch a little bit on that. But I'm guessing most of the audience is familiar with this story. So I'll probably not devote too much time to it. But definitely I'm very fortunate to follow in Steve's footsteps and kind of build on the successes that he had. And this slide shows some of the techniques that Steve developed to bring puffins back and puffins and other seabirds back to Maine. There was both translocation, the photo in the upper left here or the center of the slide, is puffins that have been translocated from a colony in Canada in Newfoundland to Maine where they were hand reared until they were a fledging age and left the island on their own accord to their own devices for the rest of their lives. Eventually, some of those puffins came back to Eastern Egg Rock first and Seal Island later. And decoys and mirrors were used to give the puffins a sense that they were in the right place, that they were surrounded by other puffins, and that it was a good place to settle down and start a family. The same techniques became used or Steve applied those techniques to terms, not the translocations as much as just the social attraction, the use of decoys to attract birds. And then it's been learned over the years since that adding recorded calls is incredibly powerful and very helpful to attract species to a site. The visual stimulus of decoys certainly draws birds in, but if there isn't additional stimulus like sound, the birds very quickly recognize that the decoys are not real and lose interest in the site when there's no interaction. Sound plays a very important role in maintaining their interest and belief in the site. So with these techniques puffins and turns were restored to Maine most famously, but a number of other projects have happened across the world, which I'll touch on in a little bit later slide. But I wanted to point out that just attracting the birds back to islands here in Maine hasn't been enough to keep them here and to help them be successful and their populations to grow. There are a number of challenges. There are a few problematic native species of predators. And this slide shows three types of aerial predators. Of course, peregrine falcons, one there over a turn, bald eagles, which are particularly effective, seabird predators, even on some of the larger seabirds like these cormorants, and great horn owls as well. Great horn owls can very easily cause a colony of birds to abandon at night and lead to the colony abandoning in effect for a year. So these species are managed on in the case of falcons and eagles. We have people living on seabird islands and their presence alone acts as a deterrent. In the case of owls, they often need to be captured and relocated to address their impacts. There are also mammalian predators, mink, otter, seals, others. That can be a problem for seabirds. Mink are particularly troublesome as they'll come on to a colony and cause a high rate of mortality and nighttime abandonment again. So predators are a significant challenge wherever restoration happens and need to be considered. We either need to be very smart. The best solution here is to pick sites where these predators are not present or can't access. But having some alternative plans such as being able to station people on the island to deter predators is usually a necessary part of any restoration project. There's also the issue of vegetation. So vegetation growth, particularly invasive, exotic vegetation, is an ongoing challenge on seabird islands here in Maine. And likely, well, it really is in a large number of locations around the world. This term is trying to find a chick. It's carrying a fish and trying to find this chick to feed. You can see how difficult that is in this very tall, dense vegetation. Certainly the vegetation problem is exacerbated in coastal Maine by climate change. We typically experience more rain in warm years. Certainly this year was an exception as Maine is in something of a drought. But the vegetation also benefits from the presence of the birds. The birds guano acts as a natural fertilizer. So there's a bit of a positive feedback loop here that we have to overcome to keep ideal habitat available for birds. That ideal habitat is a mix of bare ground or bare rock in Maine's case and vegetation. Kind of the picture in the lower left is an ideal scenario about half and half of each. And ways to maintain that include fairly robust, resilient ground cover. And that can be made out of a variety of materials. We're actually moving towards a very tightly woven hemp mat, which is terrific because it naturally biodegrades over time. So we're making some progress on identifying good materials that are compatible with the environment. And sometimes we supplement the mix of vegetation and bare substrate with nest structures, boxes, and resilient terns in particular like to have some cover, overhead cover, and these boxes provide shelters that they favor and helps them avoid predators, helps the chick stay out of sight of predators. So another way in which we enhance habitat for birds here in Maine. Another way that we maintain habitat in good quality is the removal of marine debris. And in Maine, of course, the most prolific type of fishing is lobster fishing. And the gear associated with that is sometimes lost. And then during winter storms is sometimes thrown up on islands on beaches. Most people have probably seen this in various coastal areas of Maine. It's a pretty common occurrence. And it can create hazards for birds nesting on islands, can get tangled in a in a derelict trap or on a line. And so we do regular cleanup activities, often in partnership with lobstermen. This is actually a joint project. This particular photo is a joint project at Stratton Island that we undertake with the Maine Lobster Foundation. So just an important part of maintaining a good environment for seabirds in Maine. And I wanted to show signs of success. Certainly most people are probably familiar with these curves that go up and to the right. These are two of the Maine success stories of Project Puffin. On the orange line and the scale on the right is the number of Atlantic Puffin boroughs at Eastern Egg Rock where it all started. And they continue to grow. More puffins are there about every year. And then on the left in the blue line is the number of common-turned nests or breeding pairs that we have across the Seven Island Audubon Sanctuary Network here in Maine. And that as well has been a huge success story and is growing. And we hope to overtake 10,000 pairs across our sanctuary network here sometime soon. So when you take action and commit to effort on the behalf of seabirds, there's really good things possible. But it does take concerted dedicated effort. And those efforts can spread across the country and the world. One way we're beginning to help other projects around the world is we've taken on the manufacturing of decoys for social attraction efforts. And this is Sue Schuble who's been with Project Puffin for a number of years. And she's a dedicated artist and produces amazingly life-like turns and other species. And Gannett's there in the lower right. And these decoys and sound systems are really important to projects that are happening around the world. This map shows a newly tabulated list of seabird restoration projects around the world. We actually partnered with several of the partners from as far away as New Zealand to tally all of the restoration projects and kind of learn as many lessons from all of these projects as we can. It's an amazing accomplishment now that these techniques have been used to help restore at least 94 species of seabirds around the world. It's more than a quarter of all the seabirds in the world approaching a third by some tallies. And between the different locations and species and projects, there's been almost 400 efforts that we've documented and there are surely more that we haven't heard about yet. So we're excited to see these methods spread far and wide. And it's an amazing testament to the work that's happened here in Maine and the power of this intentional conservation action. So with that kind of background, I want to touch on next kind of the emerging challenges that we're seeing here in the Gulf of Maine and that are really present everywhere across the world. But I'll speak to our local challenges and let them serve as an example of issues that people are tackling elsewhere. So here in the Gulf of Maine, of course, we have a relatively large marine ecosystem that we share with Canada. It's fed by a watershed that's a pretty good size. Mostly consists of the state of Maine, but also several other states and provinces. So all of us living on land have some influence over the Gulf of Maine. Everything that we're doing here in Maine and New Hampshire and New Brunswick and elsewhere eventually flows into the Gulf. And so we need to be mindful of what we do here because it is consequential to the Gulf. And the Gulf, things even farther afield are very consequential to the Gulf. The Gulf has traditionally been one of the coldest water areas of the ocean at its latitude. And that's primarily because the Labrador current coming down from Canada on the map here on the left, these black lines that are coming down from Labrador around Newfoundland and down our way here in the Gulf are bringing very cold water with very high quality plankton with them. And that had a significant influence on the water that was present in the Gulf of Maine. It kept it cool, particularly at the surface. The other major factor that regulates the Gulf of Maine is the Atlantic Gulf Stream, which of course comes up from the south before... Hey, hey, Don. I'm going to cut you off there for a second. Your audio is going crazy a little bit. I don't know if there's a different mic you could use or not. It happened once before and resolved itself, but me, I'm going to unmute you and see how that goes. Can you try again? Okay. How is that sounding now? It sounds great now. If it happens again, I'll jump in again and give it a minute to reset itself. Okay. Well, I'm very sorry about the audio challenge. No problem. Okay. Well, as I was saying, the Gulf of Maine is really a mix of waters from the Labrador current from the north and the Gulf Stream from the south. And as we move forward, we're seeing a much greater contribution from the Gulf Stream to the south, in part because the Gulf Stream itself is moving northward. This graph in the upper right is just a fancy way of showing the northward position of the Gulf. And you don't really need to pay attention to the anomaly and those numbers. But the trend, that orange trend line there is just indicating that the Gulf Stream is moving north more and more in association with climate change. And so more Gulf Stream water is flowing into the Gulf of Maine and less Labrador current water. And that's warming the Gulf of Maine very rapidly, even more rapidly than one would predict by the result of climate change alone. This figure, the blue line here, I'll start there, shows kind of the global average ocean temperature. And it's certainly increasing over this time period, you can see. The red line is showing the Gulf of Maine surface ocean temperature. And you can see that particularly in the last decade, the Gulf of Maine is warmed at a much higher rate than the global ocean average. And again, that's because of this change in current flows into the Gulf with much more water coming from the south than historically occurred. The map here in the upper left, you can see the fastest warming places are shown in red. And you can see that here in Maine and elsewhere along the northeast U.S. and southern Canada are among the warmest, the hottest colors and the fastest warming areas. And of course, if the water is changing, that's changing the environment for all of the animals in that water. And particularly for seabirds, that's changing the environment for fish. And fish are certainly changing their distributions to reflect those changes in water temperature. The two figures on the left here are just showing that fish are moving, are more commonly encountered in the northeast. Their distributions are shifting. And they're more commonly encountered in deeper water. And both of those effects are keeping fish in the temperature conditions that they want to be in. And so that's something that seabirds have to consider because they want to catch some of those fish. And oftentimes they want to catch particular species. White hake, a map, a distribution map for white hake is shown on the right. White hake is actually a very good fish for puffins and other seabirds. That puffin picture is holding several white hake in its bill to take the heat to its chicks. And the color coding on that map show areas where that white hake are being encountered or caught in research surveys less in blue and more in red. And you can see that white hake are becoming more common or more abundant in most of the gulf. But in that blue circled area, which is right along our main coast, there's also some blue there indicating that fewer white hake are being encountered there. Unfortunately in that blue area, that's the coast where our seabird nesting islands are. And so in areas close to seabird colonies, white hake is actually in decline. And so we're concerned that white hake, that puffins and other nesting seabirds, may have to go farther to get good fish as one outcome of climate change. And we're working hard to understand that, document it, and if it is occurring, figure out what we can do to help seabirds overcome that challenge. With climate change, we are seeing some diet changes. And I won't go into this in too much detail, but probably the most interesting change is butterfish, which are in the middle. You can see that butterfish were a small part of the diet in all of the years of this comparative study, but a bit more abundant in the more recent years, the warmer years shown in red here. And the three bars just represent three different colonies in Maine, three different islands. But just a small difference in butterfish, but a meaningful one, as I'll show in this slide and next. So butterfish are the very large fish that the adult puffin in the left photo is holding. It's not really a problem for an adult to consume. And it's a generally good, high-energy content fish. But you can see the chick holding a butterfish on the right is likely going to have a really hard time swallowing that fish. And that is what happens. We find often many butterfish scattered around a burrow that the chick has attempted to eat, but is unable to. And so that's a real problem that represents a dearth of nutrition for the chick, labor by the adult that goes to not. And so it poses a real problem for puffins, turns as well. And so we're not clear why the adults don't identify that the chicks are unable to consume them, but they are not able to do that. So poses a problem. As I mentioned in the earlier slide, butterfish are a pretty small part of the diet. So one might think it's not that significant of a problem, but unfortunately butterfish are a good signal that other fish are less present or harder to get. When we start seeing butterfish in the diet, we stop seeing other better quality fish. And so even if butterfish are not present in the diet very often, when they are, it represents a time when conditions are pretty rough, pretty challenging. And this just shows that it can be quite different between warm years, which is this period from 2009 to 2012 and other years, but it's still a pretty small part of the diet. It doesn't even get to be more than 10% of the fish are bringing back. Another significant impact we see when we experience marine heat waves is that just the overall rate of adult springing fish back to chicks drops a lot. In this figure, I'm showing in these blue bars how many times a chick, a puffin chick, this chick was actually watched on a webcam that we serve up, but how many times that chick was fed each day. And you can see in early July, late June, it was typically getting four to six or four to eight feedings per day. And the temperature here in orange was relatively moderate. But that summer we experienced two significant spikes in heat in late July and early August. And the scale on this figure is in centigrade, but the Fahrenheit temperatures at the sea surface got up to close to 70 degrees F, which is really warm for the Gulf of Maine. And you can see that the number of times a day this chick was fed really dropped and stayed low. And it stayed low until those temperatures came back down, in which time the parents could recover and they fed the chicks a lot more and the chick went from looking pretty draggled and we were worried about this particular chick to a pretty healthy looking, normal looking fledgling. So in this case, this particular pair of adult puffins were heroes and they did a really nice job of recovering and raising their chick. Not all parents were able to figure it out or were able to work hard enough to do that and that's how many chicks starved during this heat wave. So we're definitely seeing significant challenges both in what types of fish are available and just how many fish are available or can be caught and brought back for puffins and other seabirds to raise their chicks. So we're working on some new studies, we're working on some new studies on how to track puffins while they're raising chicks. We just started this work and we have a little pilot data that we're looking to do more in the next couple of years. And you can see this this puffin was tagged at Matinicus Rock what the island I mentioned earlier in Penobscot Bay or outside of Penobscot Bay up to about 30 kilometers away from the colony. So we know that puffins have some limits as to how far they can go to find prey. So if fish move too far away we know that puffins are going to experience problems. Okay. I'll just touch on a couple things and one important part of our work that we're making progress on in the last couple of years is really sharing our data with fisheries managers in ways we haven't previously. We're starting to contribute to a annual report that evaluates the state of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem and that's information that fisheries managers can use to help them set catch limits and otherwise determine how best to manage the fish that we fish for here in the Gulf. I want to touch on a couple other important aspects of our program that also are uplifting to kind of wrap up the evening with. And that's really our efforts to recruit new conservationists. We do that of course just through our research and monitoring and stewardship efforts across our sanctuary network. We have up to 25 or 30 young seasonal biologists working with this every summer. We also conduct a lot of outreach to the public. And that can be by presenting or acting as interpreters on local tour boats that are going out to sea puffin islands. That can be through classes we hold at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Bremen, Maine. But also it can be through talks that we're going to be working on. And that's just the one I'm giving tonight. And I wanted to leave you with a little bit of a to-do list. It's on our list. I hope you might add it to your to-do list. And a couple of things that we're working on or that we are going to keep working on. One is to help defend the Northeast Coast. And that is some protections for that monument were recently lifted by the current administration. We hope those protections can be restored in the future. We're working to call for ecosystem-based fisheries management. Both with new laws and regulations that set harvest. And that is something we all can do for seabirds and every species of wildlife is to advocate for action on climate change. We really cannot do enough on climate change. And whatever we can accomplish there has such profound impact on climate change. And that is an important action to be considering. So with that, I want to thank everyone for your attention. I'm really sorry about the audio qualities that I guess we experienced. And I'm happy and would love to take questions if we can do that now. Great job. It was just a brief, a couple of brief moments of audio all set. We recovered great. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'll hand over the questions that I just want to shout out. Please. If you have questions for Don, put them in the Q and A. A little speech bubble thing down at the bottom. And we will get to them as soon as he can. Well, Don, if you could start with. What are the species? Bird species in the Gulf of Maine that you are particularly focused on? Well, certainly Atlantic puffins, of course. But the other species that we have in the Gulf of Maine, we have a lot of traditional impetus for our program. And that maintains the strong focus. But the other assets that we have razor bills. Black gillamots are also. Species we track carefully. The four species of turns that we have in Maine, those are rosy at turns, which are federally listed as endangered. And common turns and Arctic turns. We also have a few novel species spread across our islands. Matinica's rock, for example, has Manx shear waters as small number. A half a dozen active nest or so, which is a really fun novelty. The majority of Manx shear waters nest in New York, not North America. We've also, in the last couple of years, had common MERS nesting on Matinica's rock, which was the last kind of member of the secret community to return to Maine. There was a long social attraction effort that finally paid off with common MERS nesting again in Maine. So that those are our primary focal species, but certainly there are others that were interested in as well. Thank you. We have a question from Dave Doubleday and Canny Bunk, asking if you could explain how a puffin catches multiple fish in its bill. Yeah. You know, I've heard a record. The number of fish a puffin can hold in its bill or has been observed to hold of over 60 fish in the bill. It's really pretty amazing. And you think about a puffin is swimming underwater to catch fish. And so it has to grab a fish. And then what they actually do is they can hold fish. They've already captured against their upper bill using their tongue and still open their lower mandible. And grab yet more and then slip their tongue underneath that. So it's a pretty impressive feat. And really impressive for them to do, you know, 10, 10s of fish at times. Thank you. We have a question from eight year old summer in Kennebunkport who says, thank you for this great talk. What is your favorite seabird species and why? That is such a hard question. Well, I have worked with turns more than any other group of birds. So I think I would probably have to say a turn. As far as which turn that's really hard. Probably a species that is not very common on our coast. And we don't even have any nesting on our islands, but I guess my initial work with seabirds was on Cassian turns. And they're probably still my favorite. It's a great one. I have a question too. I do want to say, some folks are raising their hand in the chat. Tim and Jackie, if you want to go ahead and try to type your questions into the Q A box at the bottom, that's how we can get those question answers. We're, we're not doing audio call on. So please put them in there. I see some more people raising their hand. Please put your questions in the chat. My question is about bald eagles. I've heard from a number of scientists that the, the increase in bald eagle populations over the past several decades is, is playing out in different ways on other birds. I've talked to a scientist in British Columbia who talk about Harlequin duck, molt cycles. And a lot of folks in Maine see increased loon, chick predation. I wanted to ask you what else you're seeing? With more bald eagles being on the landscape on the islands. Yeah. So it, in Maine, the most significant impact of bald eagles currently is probably on great cormorants. Maine has always had a very small population of great cormorants or it's never been large. Sometimes it's been, it's been very small, but on, there've been a half a dozen or so small colonies of great cormorants in Maine here at the southern end of their distribution in North America. And those small cormorant colonies are susceptible to just very susceptible to disturbance. An eagle can land in the colony. You know, maybe it kills one or two cormorants. But the rest of them will abandon and they'll even abandon eggs or chicks and just not come back. And so we actually only have one consistent great cormorant colony left in, in Maine at Seal Island, which is a national wildlife refuge where we staff seasonal researchers, and those researchers start early in the season, the beginning of May, and they are actually still out there right now. We still have people out there waiting for those cormorant chicks to fledge. And so just by our presence, we kind of deter eagles from perhaps disperbing and ending that last great cormorant colony. So that's how that's playing out here. Certainly on the West coast, common MERS are hugely impacted and are really shifting their distribution southward and shifting from kind of the top of large flat rocks to more cliff nesting habitat, and that's so eagles have a huge impact. We kind of, our memory is short. We kind of have a baseline of levels of seabirds and other species that started when eagles were much more absent from the environment because of DDT or persecution or other reasons. And now that eagles are returning to the scene, they're definitely changing things up from what we thought was normal. Yep. Thank you. We have a question about piping plovers in Maine. I don't know if that's, you have that information. How they're doing this. I'm not intimate with piping plovers. And I don't have data, but I do have data. I'm not intimate with piping plovers. And I don't have data, but depending on the question. I can actually. I have that as well. Nick. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead, Bill. Yeah. I got a report from Laura Ziske at Maine, who was overseeing the program. And Maine beaches hosted a record. High of 98 nesting pairs in 2020. And fledged a record 199 chicks. So that's the resulting productivity of just over two chicks per pair is well beyond the stated 1.5 recovery goals. So a good report. Don, a great question here from. Oops. Sorry. No, go ahead. Okay. Great question here from Christie. Yeah. She asked about ways to help canyons and sea mounts, national marine monument. First of all, maybe you could talk a little bit about the importance of that area. And she also asked, are there any concerns. Environmentally with that area in terms of it warming or. Anything similar to the changes you mentioned in the Gulf. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was an area set aside during the. Obama administration towards the end of his. Administration. And in part it was set aside because it's a winter home for several of our, or many of our puffins here in Maine. We've done some tracking work and program here. And multiple individuals were tracked spending time in that area of the ocean, which is a couple hundred miles. Or a bit closer off of Cape Cod. And so it's both important for seabirds, but it's also an incredibly diverse environment, particularly on the sea floor. But very productive environment for fish as well. President Trump recently lifted the restrictions on commercial fishing in that environment or in that monument. And so it's now, preparations are underway to allow a commercial fishing again in that space, which will potentially deplete what's available there, both for seabirds and other species. And so we're hopeful that that can change. There's a variety of ways to try and produce that change or suggest that change. But primarily political advocacy would be the way, for example, writing members of Congress and letting them know your, your opinion and, you know, encouraging them to support restoring those protections. I could certainly be done legislatively if possible. There is also a lawsuits that has been initiated. And I support for the organizations following forward with that. That would certainly be good. But probably political pressure is the, the most direct way that, that we as citizens can do that. Yeah. Great. We have a question as to whether there may be any volunteer opportunities. In particular for non biologists. To support any of the seabird work during the summer. Right. Yeah. So we engage with volunteers and seasonal staff in a variety of ways. Both on our seabird islands and at our Hog Island camp. And probably the best way to learn about the. Seabird opportunities is to go to project puffin. The website. And if you look through the menu there, there is a description of the different types of ways we, we get help from folks. So that, that's probably the best way. I will say that. COVID. We have a lot of information on the website. We have a lot of information on tiers. And the, the information on the website certainly does not reflect the COVID reality. But checking there to start. And then for people who are interested kind of getting in touch with us. Over the winter. I think that's a good point. Thank you. And one final question. Are there webcams on any of the islands? And what's the best way for people to. Know how things are going on the islands. Are there any periodic reports? Yeah. There are webcams on the unsealed island primarily. If you go to explorers website and search for. Audubon or Audubon puffin. That, that would get you there. We also have an Osprey webcam at the Hog Island camp. And you can also see that on explore.org. In terms of updates. We do publish an annual report on, on our progress. And we share that with all of our supporters. And anyone who gets in contact with us. We also post that on our website as a digital file for anybody to download. So that's kind of a season summary. And then for people who support the program, we offer more frequent updates during the course of the season. And so again, probably go into the website and. Getting in touch with us that way. We would be the best to get on a mailing list for those kinds of updates. Great. Well, thank you, Don, so much for being with us here tonight. It's been a pleasure to have you. We wish you all the best, of course, with all your work in Maine. Thanks to Nick and me and Audubon for hosting. I would like to mention that our next program is planned. For October 20th. With Greg Leclerc from the University of Maine. Giving us a program on reptiles. And amphibians. And so again, thank you everyone for joining us. And look forward to seeing you again. And this website, a recording of it. Of this program. We'll be available on our website. Your County Audubon.org. Thank you. And good night. Thanks to all. It was a pleasure. So much for that. Thank you very much. Great. All right. Here's a video from our county Audubon dot org. Thank you. And good night. Thanks to all. It was a pleasure.