The DOI has Trust responsibility for all marine birds in the U.S., and >95% of these reside in Alaska and the North Pacific. Essential to the conservation and management of seabirds are measures of population status and trend, and some understanding of how natural and anthropogenic factors influence population biology. For the latter, we must characterize the response of seabirds to changes in oceanography and marine climate, and resulting fluctuations in prey abundance, distribution and quality. Long-term tasks that form the core of ASC forage fish, seabird and ecosystem studies include compilation and analyses of data on the pelagic distribution of marine birds in the North Pacific relative to biological oceanography and changes in climate; development of methods for censusing and monitoring trends in seabird populations on land and at sea; studies of oceanography, plankton, forage fish and seabirds around major seabird colonies in Alaska; focused studies of rare, threatened or endangered seabirds; and measuring the impact of human-related sources of mortality on seabirds, including subsistence harvest, oil pollution, vessel disturbance, and by-catch in fishing gear. Work is conducted in collaboration with DOI partners and various state and federal agencies.
