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<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>‘Drifters
of opportunity’: Seabirds track energy in tidal currents<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>by<span
class=apple-converted-space><span style='color:#292B2C'> </span></span><a
href="https://news.mongabay.com/by/ongabay-com/"><span style='color:black;
text-decoration:none'>Mongabay.com</span></a><span class=apple-converted-space><span
style='color:#292B2C'> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>3
December 2018<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/drifters-of-opportunity-seabirds-track-energy-in-tidal-currents/?utm_source=Mongabay+Email+Alerts&utm_campaign=af3751d3e8-mailchimp_conservation_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e1ea8b5f35-af3751d3e8-76256527<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.5pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>Data from GPS-tagged seabirds,
as they were swept along in the strong currents of the Irish Sea, could help
researchers move a step closer to harnessing the energy in those shifting
tides.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>Four
years of tracking razorbills (<em><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Alca
torda</span></em>) helped Matt Cooper and his colleagues from Bangor University
and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the U.K. understand more
about the<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ARazorbill_(Alca_torda)_(W1CDR0001424_BD7).ogg"
target="_blank"><span style='color:#45AAE8'>squawking</span></a><span
class=apple-converted-space> </span>black-and-white bird’s behavior.
They learned, for example, that razorbills sit for long stretches at night on
the water’s surface, when they’re pretty much tossed around by the
energy of the sea. That gave the team an idea, Cooper said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.5pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>“We saw this as an
opportunity to re-use the data and test if the birds might be drifting with the
tidal current,” Cooper, an oceanographer and former graduate student at
Wales’s Bangor University, said in a<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="https://www.egu.eu/news/450/what-seabirds-can-tell-us-about-the-tide/"
target="_blank"><span style='color:#45AAE8'>statement</span></a>. “We
took data that was discarded from the original study and applied it to test a
hypothesis in a different area of research.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>Typically,
researchers use a combination of high-tech buoys and radar systems to better
their understanding of moving currents. But these can also be pricey. Seabirds
like razorbills, on the other hand, already spend much of their time on the
water, and the ones that provided these insights were the subject of the
team’s behavioral study between 2011 and 2014 off the coast of northern
Wales. The biologists had attached GPS tracking tags that noted each
bird’s location every 100 seconds for up to five days at a time. This
research used recordings from 49 tagged razorbills from a colony on Puffin
Island.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.5pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>Once they’d come up with
this hypothesis that seabirds could provide this information, the team sifted
through the data, stripping out times when the birds were flying. The current
in this part of the Irish Sea can move at 1 meter or more per second (3.3 feet
per second) — faster than razorbills can swim — so the researchers
could determine when the current was carrying the birds along.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>“[Their]
changing position would reflect the movement of water at the ocean’s
surface,” Cooper said in the statement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>When Cooper
and his colleagues compared the collected data and compared it with a
mathematical model of currents in this part of the Irish Sea, they discovered
that rafts of these birds provided solid information on the direction and speed
of the flow of water on the surface. The study, published Nov. 29 in the
journal<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><em><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="https://www.ocean-sci.net/14/1483/2018/" target="_blank"><span
style='color:#45AAE8'>Ocean Science</span></a></span></em>, is the first the
authors know of that uses birds to track currents, they wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:18.0pt;
background:white'><span style='font-family:"Segoe UI","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'><img
border=0 width=768 height=677 id="Imagen_x0020_3"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01D49DCB.0282DE80"
alt="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/12/03061943/picture1_alt.jpg"></span><span
style='font-family:"Segoe UI","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:18.0pt;
background:white'><span style='font-family:"Segoe UI","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>A
map shows the drifting of razorbills on currents in the Irish Sea. Image
courtesy of<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="https://www.ocean-sci.net/14/1483/2018/" target="_blank"><span
style='color:#45AAE8'>Cooper et al., 2018</span></a>.</span><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Segoe UI","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.5pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>It’s not a perfect
solution, the authors caution, because the birds won’t stay put the way
human-made buoys might.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>“We
must remember that these birds are behaving naturally and we cannot determine
where they go,” Cooper said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>Still,
he and his colleagues hope that “drifters of opportunity” —
that is, razorbills and other seabirds that biologists study, sometimes in
far-flung corners of the world — might pinpoint viable places where we
could harvest renewable, tidal energy in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><strong><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>Citation </span></strong><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt;background:white;box-sizing: inherit;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;margin:1rem 0px;word-wrap: break-word'><span
style='font-size:12.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#292B2C'>Cooper,
M., Bishop, C., Lewis, M., Bowers, D., Bolton, M., Owen, E., & Dodd, S.
(2018). <b>What can seabirds tell us about the tide?</b><span
class=apple-converted-space> </span><em><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Ocean
Science, 14</span></em>(6), 1483–1490.
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-1483-2018<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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