Half of Murres seabird population dies after this happened

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For the period of 2014 to 2016, there was a marine

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heat wave called the blob in the northern Pacific Ocean.

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It affected a lot of things and it didn't help that there was an

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El Nino year during that time or an El Nino cycle during that time.

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We haven't really quantified the effects that it

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had on species really until now. Studies

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are starting to come out saying that species such as the murre, a seabird, a

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very common seabird in Alaska, have had about a

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half of their population die off. That's over four million individuals

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die off, not just because of the heat wave, but because of

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the effects after the heat wave, which makes it even scarier and

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why we should be really worried about the effects of climate change. We're

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going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's

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start the show. Hey

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm

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your host, Andrew Luan. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how

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you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by

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taking action. And I have to, again, apologize for

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my voice. This cold does not seem to be going away. It's

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affecting everything I do, but, especially

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when I talk, and now I'm really congested, so I just wanted

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to apologize for that. Anyway, This is the podcast where

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you find out everything about the ocean So if you want to know more about the

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ocean you want to know how you can protect the ocean Not only do you want to listen to this

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podcast, but you want to go over to our website speak up for blue.com

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That's speak up for blue.com you get an information episodes

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of our podcast a video podcast other podcasts that we have out

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there as well as just information on

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the ocean in general and how to protect it and You can also get that information to

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your inbox if you don't want to go just directly to our site. You

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can just sign up with your email for free at www.speakupforblue.com

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forward slash newsletter. That's www.speakupforblue.com forward

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slash newsletter. I mentioned I have a

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cold and something that's helping me get through my cold over the

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last few days, especially as I get closer and closer to the holidays. And

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I want to have a good holidays. I don't want to be sick over the holidays. So my

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big thing is sleep, nutrition, and also my

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magic mind. Magic mind is something that I've been using over the

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especially over the last year or so It's been allowing me

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to get my dosage of just like ginger just good

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Like matcha like just good like good doses of

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good food and ingredients into my body To allow me

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to function not only during the day, but just to keep a healthy body

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I've seen a lot of people with pneumonia with like all these different types of

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viruses going around and and it's you know it's it's it's causing them

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it's causing them to disrupt their day their day-to-day activity

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this is allowing me to fight off a common cold hopefully it

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doesn't get any worse and it allows me to say hey you know what i

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feel better about myself i know i'm putting healthy things in my body and

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that helps a lot now this is obviously not a cure for any kind of virus but it

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helps me keep fighting off everything that keeps my immune system up.

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So I like to thank MagicMind for that. So if you want

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information on MagicMind and you want to buy MagicMind,

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you can use my link, my affiliate link, if you go to www.magicmind.com

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forward slash lewin20, that's L-E-W-I-N 20, that's

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magicmind.com forward slash lewin20. Check

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it out, love to hear what you think about it. just hit me

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up on how to protect the ocean Instagram, just DM me, love

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to hear your thoughts on that. Anyway, let's get into the episode. This

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is a really interesting, I'm not a seabird expert by any means, but

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they've always interested me in their patterns and their trends. Obviously,

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they really tell a story about how healthy

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the ocean is and how plentiful the food is in the

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ocean when you have a healthy population of seabirds around.

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And in Alaska, on the Pacific Ocean side, MERS

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it pronounced MERS. It's spelt m-u-r-r-e-s It's

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a common seabird and they look a little bit like flying penguins their

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stout tuxedo style bodies dive and swim in

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the ocean and eat small fish and then fly back to the islands

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off and or coastal cliffs where they nest and large colonies

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But their hearty physiques disguise how vulnerable these birds

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are to changing ocean conditions They rely on food

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from the ocean. So any disruption in of the ocean and

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the food supply will disrupt this population. This population, healthy-wise,

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back in 2008, this population in a healthy state is

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about 8 million individuals back in 2008 when measured.

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The species has been monitored from 2008 to 2020, and

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some studies have come out to say, hey, you know what? The species isn't doing very

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well. The health of the population is actually cut into half. And there's

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a number of variables around that. And obviously, there's some day-to-day things,

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like in a regular situation, There are

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disruptions in the environment. There are disruptions to

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populations. Population can undergo small die-offs. A

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population can undergo changes in just like

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short-term disruptions, right? If something was displaced in

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their colony or where they go on their cliffs or in their islands, maybe

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that would affect their young of year for that year or their reproductive

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group for that year. The babies, essentially. And then there's other times

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where, you know, maybe the food supply moved over a little bit and it came back

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the next year. So that year that they moved over, maybe the

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population didn't do so well. There's a lot of different things that

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could happen, right? We just don't know. Sometimes diseases break out in

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a colony and that colony can lose some individuals. It could lose

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hundreds, it could lose thousands, it could lose a million or so. But

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the ability for that healthy population to bounce back is really what

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we look for in healthy populations. We have small die-offs all

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the time, and then their ability to come back to the right

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number of individuals, or come back to even more,

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or just a little bit less, shows the recovery of where we're at. We monitor it

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just like we monitor fish. But not a lot of people eat seabirds, and

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that's okay, but we monitor their population on the ability to recover, ability

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to buffer a system as it changes through time. But

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over the periods of 2014 and 2016, we saw the

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heat wave, the blob. And this was a heat wave that was combined with

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a couple of El Nino years, made everything super,

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super warm on the sea surface temperature, and it just changed

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a lot of things. Some things we just don't even know how much

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it changed yet, and we're just getting a little bit of an idea. So

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in 2020, the University of Washington led Coastal Observation

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and Seabird Team, also known as COASST, which is a great acronym, by

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the way. Scientists put up a lot of acronyms, but this was

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really good. It was COASST, C-O-A-S-S-T. Very good

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acronym. It makes sense. Everything's looking on the coast. You're doing Coastal

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Observation and Seabird Survey Team. Very good. The observers first

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identified the massive mortality event affecting common murres along

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the west coast of Alaska. The study documented 62,000 carcasses,

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mostly in Alaska, in one year. In some places, beachings

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were more than a thousand times the normal rates, but the 2020 study

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did not estimate the total size of the die-off after

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the 2014 to 2016 blob event, right? That was

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one of the big things. Now this was a citizen science

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program that the University of Washington had led and so which

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is basically the coastal residents search at local beaches to

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find dead birds and documented those dead birds which contributed to

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this new study and it was led by federal scientists from the U.S. Fisheries

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and Wildlife which is kind of interesting. So the one that was published December 12th

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just recently in Science, a team led by the U.S. Fisheries and

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Wildlife Service analyzed years of colony-based surveys to

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estimate total mortality and later impacts. So

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the analysis of 13 colonies surveyed between

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2008 and 2022 finds that the colony size of the

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Gulf of Alaska east of the Alaska Peninsula dropped by

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half after the marine heat wave. In colonies along the eastern

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Bering Sea, west of the peninsula, the decline was

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even steeper at 75% loss. So it was led

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by Heather Renner, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service,

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estimates that 4 million Alaska common murres died in

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total, about half of the total population, and no recovery has

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yet to be seen. The study shows clear and surprisingly long-lasting impacts

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of a marine heat wave on top of marine predator species, as

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said by Julia Parrish, a University of Washington professor of aquatic

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and fishery sciences and of biology, who was the co-author

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of the paper, the 2020 paper and the new study. Importantly, she goes

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on, the effect of the heat wave wasn't via thermal stress on

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the birds, but rather shifts in the food web. That's in

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the food web, leaving murres suddenly and fatally without enough

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food. Here's the problem. A lot of the times, as I mentioned, usually

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the short-term disruptions. inevitably

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starving these species, right? These individuals in this population

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to the point where they lose half of their population. There's no recovery

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yet because the food within the ocean hasn't

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recovered yet. When we start to see animals either shifting areas

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because it's too hot, And these birds haven't been able to find

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where this new population is. Or the

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population that they're feeding on, the prey, have actually just died off because it's

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too hot. Animals within the ocean have a certain range of

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heat tolerance. There are reasons why certain species are where

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they are. Cold water species are in the cold because they require ranges

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in the cold. If it gets too hot, their bodies can't handle it. And

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so they either have to move to colder areas where it's more comfortable, or

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they end up dying off. That will affect the predator-prey relationship

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of these MERS seabirds. If the MERS can't find enough

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food, their population will die off. They will not recover

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until that population goes up. And we have seen this

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in a lot of predator-prey relationships. We've seen that in

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A great analogy would be the sea otter, the kelp,

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as well as the sea urchins in the Pacific Ocean. With a lot of

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sea otters around, they keep the urchins intact. And

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without those sea otters, we'll see an increase in the

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predation of sea urchins on kelp, and we'll see a decrease in kelp

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habitats, right? We also see it a little bit from sea

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stars when we start to see sea stars eat kelp habitats as well. This

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all fluctuates as each of these populations of

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species fluctuates. So once we start to see a reintroduction of

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sea otters, then the sea urchins go down a little bit

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and the kelp kind of come up. Of course, the abundance of the

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sea stars also affect the recovery of the kelp forests

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as well. So it all just teeter-totters based on the

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abundance of each of these populations of different species. And it can get quite complex.

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But when an overall shift in the temperature

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the ocean will change the actual prey relationship

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right the predator prey relationship with the with losing the abundance of

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a Specific prey and there is no other prey to take

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that place Then you're gonna start to see a loss with the seabird

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population just as we're seeing by half and no recovery in

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Place right? We haven't seen anything that's been observed If you don't remember,

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the warm blob was an unusually warm and long-lasting patch of

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surface water in the Northeast Pacific from 2014 to

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2016, affecting weather and coastal marine ecosystems from California all the

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way to Alaska. As ocean productivity decreased, the effect of

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food supply on top predators, including seabirds, marine mammals, and

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commercially important fish, also changed. Based on the condition

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of the MERS carcasses, authors of the 2020 study concluded the most

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likely cause of this mass mortality event was starvation. So

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there it is. They starve to death, unfortunately. Most of them starve to death.

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Obviously, this is a problem for this population. How this will affect the

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rest of the food web, we don't know. There's still a

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lot of research that needs to be done. But it appears that an event

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as significant as the blob for these two years have affected

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the populations of a top predator within this food

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system, which is telling of how the food web within the ocean

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has changed. And we don't even know those effects yet. There's going to be more

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research that needs to be done to be able to see what those effects are

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on this food web and what those changes are. But we may have

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actually passed a tipping point in our ecosystem management. And

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we have, like, where recovery for some of

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the pre-die-off abundance is not possible. Just think about that.

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We may be at this tipping point for this species and many others where

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we may not be able to have them recover. They may just be down at

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4 million and maybe even lower in the future because if their prey hasn't

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recovered, their prey population hasn't recovered, they're not going

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to recover. more and more individuals are gonna die until they

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can actually have enough prey to sustain that population, right?

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That number, that population, and we don't know what that number is. So obviously they need

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to do more research on what that prey population is and where

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it's at from its population, how that's changed, has it moved over, who

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knows? We don't know how it's gonna recover, but obviously monitoring and

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research needs to be done. And this is why it's so important to fund research. This

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is why it's so important to be at a point where we can ensure

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that governments as well as nonprofit organizations and

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institutes and foundations are funding this type of research because we

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need to know how these changes are affecting populations around

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the world from top predators to the bottom of the food web and everything in

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between. So that's it for today's episode. I want to just thank you for listening.

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And if you want to have if you have any more questions or comments, please feel

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free to put them on the comments down below in the YouTube channel. You

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can also put them on Spotify. They allow you to actually comment. I'd

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be more than happy to answer any kind of comments. I'm trying to look out for them.

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as much as possible. And of course, if you want to follow or subscribe to

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us on any of the Apple or Spotify or your

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favorite podcast app, please do so. We're available on video and audio on

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most platforms. With me, you can do so by hitting me up on Instagram at

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HowToProtectTheOcean. That's at HowToProtectTheOcean on

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Instagram. DM me. I'd be more than happy to have a chat with you. And I

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want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How To Protect The Ocean podcast.