Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Plastic bags imperil leatherback sea turtles, who are thought to mistake the bags for jellyfish.

(An irregular column to capture insults to wildlife)

Plastic bags have long been the bane of conservationists around the world. Cheap to produce and disposed of without a second thought, plastic bags kill marine animals, leech toxic chemicals and take an estimated 1,000 years to decompose in landfills. Not to mention they play a starring role in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So why are California textbooks now touting positive messages about these disposable derelicts?

According to the Huffington Post, schools officials in California edited a new environmental curriculum to include positive messages about plastic shopping bags after feeling pressure from the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the plastics industry. This included a rewrite of textbooks and teachers’ guides, featuring a new section to the 11th-grade teachers’ edition textbook called “The Advantages of Plastic Shopping Bags.” The title and some of the textbook language were inserted almost verbatim from letters written by the chemistry council.

Absent from the rewrite is the fact that each year, Americans use an estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags – almost all of which are thrown into the garbage, and with many migrating to the planet’s rivers, lakes and oceans. The millions of tons of plastic floating in the world’s oceans traps as many as a million seabirds every year, as well as some 100,000 marine mammals. Many of these animals mistake the bags for food, such as the imperiled leatherback sea turtle, who likely mistakes the plastic bags for jellyfish, a preferred food source.

Fortunately, change is in the air: throughout the country, efforts have been launched to cut down on the use of plastic bags, from the explosion of reusable shopping bag sales to plastic bag taxes. Washington, D.C. was the first to institute a 5 cent tax on plastic bags distributed by any ”business that sells food items,” from grocery stores to bakeries. The Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act, known locally as “Skip the Bag, Save the River,” is an attempt to save the city’s degraded Anacostia River.

Not only has the effort been successful, but Treehugger asked if this may be the most effective tax ever. Just one month after its introduction last January, the number of plastic bags handed out by supermarkets and other establishments dropped from the 2009 monthly average of 22.5 million to just 3 million. While significantly reducing plastic waste, the tax revenues will be used to clean up the Anacostia. The District isn’t the only one reaping success from a plastic bag ban. In China, a ban on super thin plastic bags reduced plastic bag usage by 66 percent and saved China 1.6 million tons of petroleum. With savings like these, a plastic bag tax has the potential to catch on worldwide.

Now THAT’S the kind of problem solving that should be taught in schools.

To learn more about how plastic bags make it from the check-out aisle to our waterways, watch The Majestic Plastic Bag – a Mockumentary.

Aboard the Gordon Gunter

The research vessel Gordon Gunter is the pride of the NOAA fleet. It routinely and deservedly receives a “Ship of the Year” award from the Department of Commerce. At more than 200 feet long, it rides comfortably in rough seas, and provides me with a wealth of different decks and vantage points from which to gaze out across the Gulf, searching for the next seabird. And for a working ship, I find my berthing accommodations here almost luxurious.

Not only do I get the small room to myself (it sleeps 2); there is a small desk at the foot of the bed on which I can set up two computers, a scanner, adapters, and power strip. There is a small shelving unit to store books, binoculars, a GPS unit, and other paraphernalia. I share a shower/restroom with the berth next door.

Our science complement works around the clock on at least three shifts, with a fourth schedule maintained by most of the Gunter’s crew. Almost all of the plankton scientists work in 12-hour shifts, noon to midnight, or midnight to noon. That’s a long time, but our sampling stations are three to five hours apart, so this transit time can be used to rest and catch meals. A Japanese scientist who specializes in identifying the larvae of the endangered blue fin tuna through a microscope works odd hours, much of it at night from what I can tell. I work from about 6 a.m. to about 10:30 p.m., outside surveying during daylight hours, inside doing paperwork and data back-up at night. The ship’s crew works 4 hours on, 8 hours off, twice each day.

Now on some ships, meals qualify pretty much as sturdy chow. But not here on the Gordon Gunter. Margaret, our chef, does wonders inside the kitchen, constantly pulling out delights. We have a daunting array of entre choices at each meal. We have had fresh fish, caught from the Gulf itself, nearly every day. Some of my contractors rave about the Gunter’s food, and they should know, because they have worked many ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Mealtimes, however, are relatively short, at a bit more than an hour, and always with the same fixed times. But Margaret encourages us to prepare and save a plate if we must continue working, then return to enjoy it at a more leisurely pace when we are off-shift.

Chris working at "the bridge," here aboard NOAA's Nancy Foster

Time passes surprisingly quickly working out at sea. A regular and packed work schedule fills my day up – it is impossible to get bored, even when the marine life is slow, because the next exciting find can be just over the horizon. The work is also quite tiring, in unexpected ways, because of all the constant bodily adjustments required to accommodate the ship’s motions. This can make for some interesting sorts of muscular fatigue.

Unlike twenty years ago, when going out to sea was such an isolating experience, there is now a wealth of information constantly at one’s fingertips . The bridge, of course, has all sorts of sophisticated navigation and weather data (see photo left). What has changed so much from the era in which I was schooled is all of the real-time environmental information at our disposal from models, satellites, and other sources. We know instantly what the ocean is doing. And with remarkably good internet service, we can communicate that knowledge to the outside world with almost no delay. If there were actually any free time, there is also satellite TV and a huge library of movies. I find all these amenities reassuring, because I have to ask some of our contractors to spend almost 3 weeks at sea at one time. This 10-day leg I signed up for is a relatively short jaunt.

Learn more:

Stay tuned for more tales from the Gulf! Click here to read Chris’ other accounts of life at sea.

One year later, Defenders continues to fight for wildlife in the Gulf. Click here to learn more about what we’re doing and see what YOU can do to help!

Wilson's storm petrel, courtesy of Lt. Elizabeth Crapo/NOAA

Seabird identification, especially from a pitching and rolling ship, is not easy. First of all, one has to throw away almost all of the tried-and-true methods that we use on dry land. Forget about using color, moving to a better vantage point, or listening to a song or call notes for clues.

Sometime during the late 1970s, I first learned just how difficult it was to even get a seabird into the field of view of my own binoculars. A friend and I had driven overnight from Tennessee up to Ocean City, in order to go out into the Atlantic Ocean during late May to see pelagic seabirds. Richard Rowlett was then chartering local fishing head-boats, loading them up with enthusiastic birders. (At that time, such excursions were still quite a novelty, whereas today one can select from an extensive menu of seabird trips on both Atlantic and Pacific coasts.)

Typical of the North Atlantic, my first pelagic excursion was a very bumpy ride. When a Wilson’s storm-petrel or Cory’s shearwater came into view, it never stayed in my binoculars long enough. I could not keep my balance; some surprise motion of the boat would knock me off tracking the bird. My main memory of that first experience is giving up, and trying to view the closest birds with the naked eye, hands clasped tightly to the rail, relying upon the word of others as to what I was actually seeing.

But experience finally teaches. For pelagic seabirds, one has to rely mostly on subtle cues. These include the bird’s shape and silhouette, flight behavior, and any contrasting pattern of dark and white. The truth is, we rely a great deal on how a seabird behaves to pin it down to species. Does it fly in a straight line? Or does its path over the sea rise and fall, like a rollercoaster? Does it look short-winged and long-bodied, with a labored flight? If yes, it’s an Audubon’s shearwater. If instead it looks long-winged and short-bodied, with a bounding flight, it’s a Manx shearwater. Is that storm-petrel flapping briefly, and then gliding on bowed wings? It’s a band-rumped storm-petrel. Does it have a more fluttery flight, with almost no glides? It’s a Wilson’s storm-petrel. And so on.

Sooty shearwater, courtesy of NOAA

The best thing I can do, aside from wishing for calm seas, is to first pick my observation point on the ship carefully. In other words, select a vantage point where the lighting best helps give away a bird’s identity. During high overcasts, the lighting is optimal, because the entire bird, top and bottom, can be evenly lit. But if there is any glare early or late in the day, I try to place myself where the birds are back-lit, with the sun over my shoulders. This position is especially good for picking out light or dark-and-white seabirds. For small, all-dark species like storm-petrels, I try to find lighting that makes the ocean surface look relatively even and lighter, the better to pick out these small, dark specks winging their way just over the waves. During mid-day, when lighting can be very harsh, I use the horizon to try to detect any birds that cross the line contrasting sea and sky.

If I can get a glimpse in good light, just a few seconds, I can almost always tell what I am seeing. If all goes well, medium size and larger birds can be identified up to a kilometer away. But there are always some birds whose ID just confounds us…the mystery birds. Like fishing tales, we too have our nautical stories of the “ones that got away.”

Learn more:

Stay tuned for more tales from the Gulf! Click here to read Chris’ other accounts of life at sea.

One year later, Defenders continues to fight for wildlife in the Gulf. Click here to learn more about what we’re doing and see what YOU can do to help!

Skipjack tuna

Birds are hardly the only marine life we see during this Gulf study. One morning out at sea I see a shiny, transparent piece of debris bobbing on a wave. Oh no, I think; it looks like plastic, of a size and appearance to pose a real danger to any sea turtles thinking to get an easy meal.

But it is entirely natural, a Portuguese man-of-war “jellyfish.” It has a body consisting of a translucent gas-filled, bladder-like float tinted pink, blue, or violet, part of which forms a crest which functions as a sail for drifting movement across the sea. Underneath this float is a cluster of polyps from which hang tentacles of up to 165 feet long. These pelagic colonial hydroids or hydrozoans are infamous for their very powerful, painful stings. One of the Gordon Gunter’s very own crew members was stung fiercely during a swim at the beach last week in Key West.

Our crew is fanatical about fish, and fishing. During daylight hours, we trail a line or two far behind the ship while it is underway, hoping to catch our lunch or supper. We are not disappointed. Mahi-mahi (also known as dolphin-fish or dorado) are our most frequent catch. The intense blue, yellow, and green colors of these predators are visible even when the fish is several feet below the ocean surface. In addition to those caught, it is not unusual to see two or three scattered around anything floating, a wooden board, a small plastic float, a patch of Sargassum weed.

Spinner dolphins

We also catch several wahoo, a torpedo-shaped member of the mackerel family highly regarded by many gourmets. Some wahoo have reached 8 feet in length, and weigh up to 180 pounds. Today we catch a small skip-jack tuna, a fish that schools up and roils the water during its feeding frenzies. And above those frenzies hover birds, numerous and diverse, hoping to seize a small fish being chased by the larger ones.

Although not tallied in large numbers, two of the three marine mammals we do see are species I’ve never seen before. In addition to the widespread bottlenose dolphin, we see a small pod of pan-tropical spotted dolphin, dashing in to playfully ride the bow wave of the ship. Compared to their larger cousins, the Atlantic spotted dolphin, the spots on this species are smaller, at times entirely absent, but their upper and lower jaws separated by thin white “lips” on their long beak confirm their identity. And one evening at dusk, another dolphin pod sneaks up on the Gunter from the stern. I notice a very long, erect dorsal fin, not as swept-backward as on most dolphins. Could it be? After one dolphin playfully breaches through the water, doing a double-axel role before splashing back down, there is no doubt: these are spinner dolphins, a species I have long wanted to see.

Leatherback turtle

Throughout our winter and spring surveys this year, we have seen very few sea turtles in the Gulf. But this day I am rewarded twice over. Not just one, but two huge leatherback turtles. This endangered species is the largest, deepest-diving, most migratory and wide-ranging of all sea turtles. Some leatherback turtles reach 2,000 pounds! One is so close to the ship that I can clearly see the large pink spot on the top if its head, each spot as unique and useful as our fingerprints for determining individual identity.

Learn more:

Stay tuned for more tales from the Gulf! Click here to read Chris’ other accounts of life at sea.

One year later, Defenders continues to fight for wildlife in the Gulf. Click here to learn more about what we’re doing and see what YOU can do to help!

A cattle egret, courtesy of Bob O'Connor, USFWS

For several days, indeed much of this entire spring season, winds here in the southern Gulf of Mexico have blown strongly from the east. For land-birds that are trying to island-hop back to their North American breeding grounds through the Caribbean, this can pose a bit of a hazard, especially if their normal routing is up through Cuba and then over the relatively short 90-mile gap over to southern Florida and the Keys. Before they reach land, the strong winds can blow them far to the west, where only open water awaits the tired travelers.

Today on the Gordon Gunter we witnessed both tragedy and triumph for these exhausted migrants. After dawn, a cattle egret showed up, its gleaming white plumage, buff streaks, and brilliant yellow bill indicating a bird in full breeding status. After circling the ship, it finally landed, and ducked into a quiet alcove on the forward deck. By mid-day, another cattle egret had joined the first. Whenever disturbed by our work, these two would fly off temporarily, as if on a short scouting trip looking for land, but then come back. At the end of the day, at least three of the white birds had found refuge on our ship. At last they found a deserved rest perched high on the aft superstructure, hunkered down on some railing and faced into the howling wind.

Such an opportunistic strategy goes a long way in explaining how these land-birds got to the New World in the first place. Originally natives of Africa, it is believed that cattle egrets arrived in South America under their own power, and from there spread rapidly northward. Watching these egrets today, it occurred to me that those first immigrants might well have been assisted by the occasional rest (if not an entire free passage) afforded by a ship. My theory got some support the next day: when I looked for our hitchhikers, each had continued on with their flights sometime the previous night.

Those were not our only terrestrial visitors. A few solo barn swallows winged by, deviating only slightly from their route, and kept heading north. One merlin, a species of small falcon, dive-bombed past the pilot-house, then rocketed off. A group of shorebirds flew in tandem low over the water, steadily beating their way to a distant landfall. The high drama, however, was provided when a peregrine falcon stalked a hapless warbler flying low over the water.

Peregrine falcon in flight, courtesy USFWS

I saw the falcon first: a stocky profile bulleting around the stern of the Gunter, its flight path twisting and turning. As it came up the port side toward the bow, I saw it was actually chasing something. A tiny olive bird, a warbler flying only inches off the waves, was in its crosshairs. For a while the warbler’s tighter turning radius kept it out of the predator’s reach; I silently hoped it would stay that way.

But the peregrine climbed higher, zeroed in, and then shot down, striking a blow that knocked the warbler into the water. The falcon then circled around, deftly plucked the warbler off the ocean surface, and then flew past the pilot-house bridge. Right in front of me, using the wind for lift, the falcon flew so as to plane its wing into a near stall, and then proceeded to first pluck and then eat the warbler grasped in its talons. All of this occurred in flight, on the wing, over the open ocean, a hundred or more miles from land. And not content to stop there, the peregrine started diving-bombing the ocean again, scaring the flying-fish into a potentially fatal mistake of flushing out of the safer water below and into the far more dangerous air above.

Even now I can scarcely believe what I saw. Peregrines are famously powerful flyers, not at all intimidated to cross very large expanses of open sea. And why should they be, if they can hunt, capture, and eat on the wing?

Learn more:

Read Chris’ first entry about returning to the Gulf to survey seabirds just a year since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

One year later, Defenders continues to fight for wildlife in the Gulf. Click here to learn more about what we’re doing and see what YOU can do to help!

The Gordon Gunter

I glance out the porthole and see the pier disappearing rapidly. We are underway. Just over one year since the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster began, I am headed back out into the deep Gulf of Mexico, this time on NOAA research vessel the Gordon Gunter. We have been studying seabirds and the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for 10 months now. Eight of us have traveled tens of thousands of kilometers crisscrossing the ocean looking for clues, evidence of harm to seabirds.

This was to have been an eleven-day trek, the third leg of a long, two-month project that NOAA devotes to studying larval bluefin tuna and other fish plankton. But we have been delayed a day for mechanical reasons. Fortunately, being stuck an extra day in the port of Key West, Florida, seems to not bother anyone very much. We are moored at the western end of town, near the Navy Annex and the beaches of Ft. Zachary State Park. Some of the scientists use the extra time to make an excursion over to the Dry Tortugas for snorkeling. I took a pass, staying behind to back-up and transfer data from our first two research legs.

Least tern, courtesy Mark Pavelka, USFWS

As we steam southward through the shipping channel, the wind and waves pick up. Here the water is a brilliant turquoise-white. Tiny least terns flit and dive for unseen fish, and a few magnificent frigatebirds soar lazily far overhead. We left mid-afternoon, so a quick mental calculation tells me that I ought to have at least 4 hours of time before sunset to run transects and count seabirds. I take up position on the port-side wing-bridge, just outside the pilot house. Although some of us like to go as high as possible on the ship for the view, and there is a shaded flying bridge one level up on the Gunter, I like being nearer to the water — it helps me pick out birds on the distant horizon.

Ahead the turquoise water abruptly ends. On the other side lies water with a more violet hue. Several terns work back-and-forth along this boundary, looking for prey. Two roseate terns head to our stern, the first of this species I’ve seen during the entire survey.

Heading almost due west, the glare intensifies as the day wanes. I turn to my left, the sun backlighting the ocean in front of me. The ocean here is alive. Frightened by the ship’s passing, huge elliptical schools of very small flyingfish leap out of the water in unison, glide on the brisk wind, and fall back into the sea. In the air, the sun turns them silvery-blue, sparkling. A giant hammerhead shark surfs one of the waves next to the ship.

Sooty tern in flight

Then I see an alternating flash of dark-and-white dart pass the bow. This is an Audubon’s shearwater, its flight pattern arcing low over the waves. This seabird has a long body and relatively short, narrow wings. The wind gives it a boost from what is normally a labored flight, and the backlighting helps me pick out first one and then more as they all tack the wind heading south. A little later, I see a milling flock of sooty terns, wheeling in circles high over some distance school of fish. A jaeger tries to harass a tern, and nab its catch, but the tern is a better climber, and the jaeger eventually tires and glides back down to the surface.

Almost no clouds in the western sky impede our view as the sun drops into the far horizon. I finally stop at sunset, completing 27 transects and tallying scores of birds. A successful afternoon – it is good to be back in the Gulf.

Learn more:

Stay tuned for more from Chris on his journey back into Gulf waters.

One year later, Defenders continues to fight for wildlife in the Gulf. Click here to learn more about what we’re doing and see what YOU can do to help!