Energy flows from tiny photosynthetic organisms like algae to crustaceans and fish to top predators such as orcas, polar bears, humans and of course, seabirds. You might hear this flow of energy called a food chain. A food web is all the food chains in an ecosystem combined. The food web is a wonderful system in which every living thing depends on each other. A change in one element of the system will affect how the rest of the food web functions.
So, why am I studying seabirds? Imagine this scenario: in a small fjord on the coast, the local community discovers their new favorite delicacy, lobster. Lobster is delicious, so they catch as much of it as they can as quickly as they can to feed and earn money for their families. Just a few years later, the community notices that they aren’t catching as many lobsters as before. They are fishing faster than the lobsters can reproduce! But the trappers can’t stop because their livelihood depends on these yummy crustaceans. They continue, but the whole coastal ecosystem begins to struggle too. Without the lobsters, bottom-feeding fish like cod have fewer choices of food, and their population also begins to decline. Without the cod or the lobsters, the seabirds now have very limited options for food, and they no longer have enough for their chicks to grow healthy and strong.
In coastal ecosystems like this one, seabirds are at the top of the food chain. Therefore, studying their health and the survival of their chicks can tell us lots about the state of the ecosystem. We call organisms like seabirds indicator species. In my research, I study two indicator species: the Great Black-Backed Gull (GBBG) and the Common Eider.
