“ Explaining value to the hunter is a bit more difficult, but anyone who has taken the time to go out on our marine waters and observe the many species of seabirds and watch them flying and feeding cannot help but be fascinated by them. The flight of thousands of murres skimming over the water surface and somehow managing not to dash headlong into a wave is a fascinating sight.
We who are in fish and wildlife work have had to readjust our thinking and values during recent years. ”

“ The fish and birds are so interrelated that fluctuations in the abundance of one may well be responsible for changes in the abundance of the other. The seasonal and annual variation in the impact of birds on fish is a function of the life history, food habits, growth rate, and final size of the fish species of concern and of the distribution, abundance, and feeding habits of bird populations—plus the effects of the environment on these factors. ”

“ Perhaps the most significant gap in our knowledge of North Pacific seabirds is in the area of productivity and demography. As far as I can judge, we know almost nothing about the breeding success of these birds, their post-fledging survival, their longevity, their age at first breeding, the age structure of their populations, the fluctuations in their breeding performance, or their survival from year to year. For most species, we lack even the most basic life history and life table information. ”

“ The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 found that "marine mammals have proven themselves to be resources of great international significance, esthetic and recreational as well as economic, and it is the sense of Congress that they should be protected and encouraged to the greatest extent feasible commensurate with sound policies of resource management and that the primary object of their management should be to maintain the health and stability of the marine ecosystem." ”

“ If we can argue by analogy from studies made in other parts of the world, including the North Atlantic, we can make some basic generalizations that we would expect to apply to the birds of our area. We know that as a class seabirds have some peculiar characteristics which make them difficult to manage and cause some of the problems we have in conserving them. In general, they are long-lived and breed slowly, most lay small clutches, and the historical experience is that they take a very long time to recover from depletion of population. ”

“ Many people realize intuitively that seabirds are important members of marine ecosystems. Although the supporting evidence is not now available, it will be needed if seabirds are to be protected. Emotion alone will not justify the protection of seabirds in an age when the human race moves steadily toward global famine. The job at hand is, in part, to sell seabirds, not just to the public, government officials, executives of oil companies, or fish-packing concerns, but also to marine biologists and oceanographers, for the scientists have the best means to study organisms at sea. ”

“ We may say that the effect on seabird populations of spills of oil products or chemical pollutants in coastal waters of a region will be a "final solution" for any that become wholly extinct before the oil wells go dry or the industries fail. On the other hand, the effect will have been merely a perturbation of the population if the species survives and outlives these activities. ”

“ Since earliest times, marine birds have accompanied the evolution of human societies in coastal and insular environments of the world. Their social value is in part recorded in kitchen middens of ancient campsites and villages. From the time man first inhabited the seacoasts and ventured out in ships, the company of seabirds has added life and inspiration to what otherwise would be a bleak and desolate landscape. ”

“ In judging the costs and benefits of a conservation program, we should not look just at the value of the birds as meat, or oil, or indicators of pollution. The real issue here, as in all economic problems, is the rational allocation of resources. ”

“ I have been impressed by the evidence we have for major effects of predators on the seabird populations here. I would regard control of predators and management of habitats on some of the major seabird islands as an extremely urgent task.
A longer-term but no less important program is public education. This program has several important aspects: one is to increase public support for political actions and effective regulations to protect seabirds; another is to educate the public about the vulnerability of seabirds and to prevent disturbance or deliberate human destruction. ”

“ Many of the man-made changes we are concerned about are short-term. To identify their effects we should look not for changes in total population but rather for changes in biological parameters, such as the first-year survival rate or the number of young raised. I therefore suggest that some of the most critical parameters to be measured are changes in age structure of populations. We should therefore select as biological monitors species that can readily be aged—for example, gulls, which have a sequence of distinguishable immature plumages. ”

“ The reason is not far to seek. It is far less important to examine the ecology of organisms at the next highest level of the food chain to the ones that are the primary concern than it is to examine the next lowest level (the food of the fishes or, in the case of phytoplankton, the physical and chemical environment in which the organisms grow best) .
Seabirds are at the very top of the marine food chain, and they are not wholly aquatic in any case since they mainly travel through the air rather than the water and reproduce on land rather than in the sea. ”

“ Our marine habitat is rapidly being developed for recreational homesites and public use which can eliminate key habitat use. A greater public awareness of the needs of marine birds can be a help in preventing destruction of their habitat; however, money talks the loudest. The acquisition of these key habitats is the most positive means of insuring their retention. We have no solution at this time to the funding problem and only hope that someone smarter than we are can provide an acceptable solution before all of our efforts become too little and too late. ”

“ We are beginning to understand the factors that control the breeding distribution of the individual species, their foraging strategies, and their dispersion at sea, at least in summer. However, it is clear from what has been said at this conference that we know much less about their ecology and distribution in winter. This lack of information is important because conflicting opinions have been expressed as to whether factors operating in the winter range or at the breeding colonies are more critical in limiting population size. ”

“ Historically, it has probably been man's unregulated harvest of marine birds that has been the primary cause of their destruction. Generally, the loss of a species because of unregulated harvest is no longer a matter of major concern, because most countries of the world are providing at least some protection for their marine birds. However, other factors such as habitat destruction and contamination of the marine environment by industrial pollutants are posing increasingly serious threats to many. ”

“ Such a direct relation between colony density and mortality would be necessary for density-dependent mortality to regulate the number of birds on a breeding colony. Conversely, one cannot expect that all colonies will decrease equally because mortality should be equally distributed if all the population gathers on a common wintering ground. Thus density-dependence acts only in a very general way upon the sum of animals considered as an abstract entity—the population. ”

“ Since fish seem to be highly digestible, most of the energy contained in them is available to the consumer. There are, unfortunately, no data on the digestibility of marine invertebrates, but those for insects suggest that digestibility, at least of crustaceans with exoskeletons, is somewhat lower than that for fish. A bird would therefore have to eat a larger biomass of invertebrates than of fish to satisfy the same energetic needs (although cost of procurement might not be as high as for fish) .
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A bird must satisfy not only energetic needs, but also nutritional requirements. ”

“ Success in more adequately recognizing and using social and economic indicators to strengthen and broaden seabird programs will depend on the ability of the resource management agencies to blend the old with the new. It is obvious to most that new alignments, programs, authorities, and sources of funds are needed, but by themselves, they will not be enough to overcome the continuing massive losses of wildlife habitat due to population growth and technological impacts resulting from various developmental programs. ”

“ It is hard to dismiss the evidence pointing to the impact of human activities on seabird populations during the last 3 centuries. Yet it would be misleading to assume that without man's interference seabird populations would have remained stable. Success in designing programs of protection and population enhancement must allow for the realities—that seabird populations fluctuate inherently, and that secular changes occur regularly in their environment. ”

“ Even when different species have traveled the same distance to an identical food stock, therefore, the costs of procurement differ.
Time and energy spent foraging depends not only on abundance and ease of capture, but also on nutritional return, and on the age and size of the bird. Fig. 3 shows that the smaller species in a seabird community may spend the most time foraging. Even though this illustration is taken from the breeding season when food demands of the young must be taken into account, it suggests a difference based on cost of living according to size. ”

“ The matter of conservation of marine species in New Zealand has stemmed mainly from the recognition of the value of certain islands as refuges for whole ecosystems, as convenient areas for study, and as arks for the rescue of the threatened species that can be successfully established on them—an often highly hazardous and uncomfortable procedure for men as well as birds. ”

“ I think that it is no accident that the southern limit of several northern species of North Pacific seabirds ends in southeastern Alaska or northern British Columbia, and that the northern limit of the ranges of several other species occurs in Washington State or southern British Columbia. Indeed, the west coast of Vancouver Island is not rich in species, and several of those that exist are not present in great numbers. ”

“ Thus, any society has an economy whether or not it uses cash, and when the meat, feathers, or oil of marine birds are used, the birds have economic value. The problem, of course, is that of trying to determine just what this value is when a cash medium does not exist. ”

“ It can also encourage the musty sophistry that when a population increases beyond this abstract carrying capacity it "needs" to be hunted to prevent overcropping resources and damage to itself through a population decline. But we will not have the time to carry out detailed studies of life histories seeking for critical population-habitat interactions over several fluctuations for each species involved in a disaster before designing programs to help seabird populations to build up their numbers. ”

“ Insofar as conservation measures of a passive type are concerned, it is fortunate that the offshore and outlying islands not yet occupied, farmed, or set aside as reserves, are likely to remain unexploited, either because they are too remote for exploitation to be economical or because they are too inhospitable, or both. In any event, public opinion is now such that unmodified or otherwise biologically important islands not already reserved would be proclaimed as reserves if threat of exploitation arose unexpectedly, unless they were found to be major sites for oil or minerals. ”

“ Although both types of use have provided economic benefits over the years, overharvest that results in long-term resource depletion is not usually the most or best economic use in the long run; obviously a "harvest" cannot be sustained at a given level when the resource base is constantly being depleted. On the other hand, when certain species of marine birds are used in accordance with principles of sustained yield, they can provide long-term economic values to society in conjunction with the social, esthetic, and intangible values that their preservation insures. ”

“ The industry seeks to mitigate wildlife losses through improved technology, research in the rehabilitation of species exposed to oil, and the development of oil spill/wildlife contingency plans.
Oil spills and marine birds not only constitute a deadly mix but have proved to be one of our toughest environmental problems to solve. The rehabilitation of these tragic victims is plagued with controversy, emotion, apathy, and biological unknowns. The costs have been high and the survival rates low. During the last 10 years, a few dedicated people working here and in Europe have reversed this trend. ”

“ Conservation is cheap. Most of us are accustomed to working on what are essentially shoestring budgets—on the order of $100,000, $10,000, or even $1,000 per year. When we hear of a million dollars as the cost of doing something, we tend to think of it as a lot of money. H. Boyd mentioned a situation on Baffin Island, where it would cost about a million dollars to dispose of mine tailings on shore instead of dumping them into the ocean under a fulmar colony. I do not think a million dollars is very much—certainly not in comparison with the cost of restoring a colony of half a million fulmars. ”

“ Those who do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat it. If we study the history of conservation, we find that it developed most rapidly in those countries which mismanaged their natural resources earliest. Within the developed countries there has been a progressive historical trend toward rational use and conservation of natural resources. Conservation of natural resources, in fact, represents the future and, as biologists, it is our duty to promote it. ”