The Oil Spill and Caribbean Seabirds

The ongoing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico gravely threatens wildlife throughout the Gulf and leading into Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas if the slick is carried off on the Gulf Stream. The most recent reports indicate that 5000 barrels of orange crude oil per day are leaking from the well-head, which is about 1.5 km underwater.

There will be a minimum of resources available to help birds, and rare species should receive priority over common ones. Fortunately, most migratory waterbirds will have left the Gulf wintering area already. This leaves rare birds that breed in the area as the primary targets of recovery efforts.

Masked Booby populations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are extremely low (~4000 pairs) with the majority (3500 pairs) on the Campeche Banks, just north of the Yucatan Peninsula. While we know little about the at-sea movement patterns of Boobies and other seabirds in the West Indies, the slick area is 700 km north of the Campeche Banks, easily within foraging range of the Boobies actively nesting there. This spill could devastate the population.

The major populations of seabirds (and other marine life) in the Florida Cays, Northern Cuba, and the Cay Sal Bank of the Bahamas are directly threatened. The Cay Sal Bank has fantastic coral and fish populations and thousands of nesting pairs of rare seabirds including Roseate Terns and Audubon's Shearwaters. Populations in the Florida Keys and the north shore of Cuba are also globally significant, with several Important Bird Areas recognized.

There are scant data about areas in the path of the slick that are of high importance to seabird foraging. The plume is likely to track the continental shelf break to the tip of Florida. This area is likely to be used by pelagic birds such as Black-capped Petrels and other species with tiny remaining populations.

Even if dispersants are used successfully and the major oil slicks are broken up on the ocean, some of the oil will be taken into the food web and eventually end up within the seabirds and large fish. The spill is another blow to an already degraded environment.

My recommendations:

1. Any Rescue efforts should focus on rare species first when overloaded with animals to treat.
2. Survey teams should be sent to the major nesting areas to examine the nesting populations for unattended eggs, oiled adults, and sickened birds.
3. The slick should be tracked by recovery boats to document birds that are affected and to help those that can be salvaged.
4. Money for the recovery should be used for ongoing island restoration attempts to increase the breeding success of the populations that are affected.
5. Research into the effects of dispersant and petrochemicals on the health of the birds should be funded by BP, Haliburton, and Transocean.
6. Research into the economic disruption should be funded as well, including impacts in the Bahamas and Cuba.

Here is a list of 49 Seabirds that occur in the Gulf of Mexico (compiled by Dave Lee):

Common Loon
Bermuda Petrel - Unknown
Black-Capped Petrel - Unknown
Cory's Shearwater
Greater Shearwater
Audubon's Shearwater
Wilson's Storm Petrel
Band-rumped Storm Petrel
Red-billed Tropicbird
White-tailed Tropicbird - likely
Brown Pelican
Northern Gannet
Masked Booby
Brown Booby
Parasitic Jaeger
Long-tailed Jaeger
Pomerine Jaeger
Great Black-backed Gull
Glaucous Gull
Iceland Gull
Thayer's Gull (form of Iceland Gull)
Herring Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Laughing Gull
Common Blackheaded Gull
Common (Mew) Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Franklin's Gull
Bonaparte's Gull
Little Gull
Caspian Tern
Royal Tern
Roseate Tern
Common Tern
Arctic Tern
Sandwich Tern
Forster's Tern
Gull-billed Tern
Least Tern
Black Tern
Brown Noddy
Black Noddy
Bridled Tern
Sooty Tern
Black Skimmer
Red Phalarope