Jul 29, 2026 · 28 min · 8 segments
Jackie Canterbury speaks with Dr. Eric Wagner about his book, Seabirds as Sentinels. The Pacific coast — often called the "Blue Serengeti" — is a major center for seabird research. The central idea is…
I mean, you have everything from penguins, which I study, which are aerially flightless, all the way up to albatrosses with wingspans of 12 feet, flying thousands of miles.
And so there's something about the breadth of their biology and ecology that makes them very just sort of compelling characters.
And also in the sense that they live, they exist and persist at the top, often near the top of food webs.
And so many of the changes that are occurring at sort of lower trophic levels, like things that radiate up from phytoplankton to zooplankton to small fish to all the things that seabirds eat and need to live, they manifest in a seabird's life and how well it is able to raise chicks and how long it lives and whether or not it gets covered with oil and whether or not it gets caught as a bycatch in a fishery.
And so because of that visibility, you know, that makes them fascinating to look at, fascinating to study, and fascinating to try to learn from.
And so that's how that idea of the sentinel species and seabirds as being excellent sentinels, that's where it comes from.
So that's one of the things where often seabirds are responding to fairly small changes.
You know, a lot of the there's some interesting things about seabird life history and that there are long lived species.
You know, many live, you know, you've heard of wisdom, the albatross who's been breeding for something like 60 years.
Their biology accommodates this notion that they're going to be good years and bad years.
You know, they're not always going to be able to raise as many chicks as they would like.
But it seems like lately, owing to a number of climate factors, increased marine temperatures, shifting prey ranges, that climate change is really becoming, not becoming, is a huge factor in seabird life history and conservation.
And so within the Salish Sea, we're seeing warming waters and shifting prey movements.
And how long have these prey movements been changing? Do you have a time frame for that?
I mean, you have everything from penguins, which I study, which are aerially flightless, all the way up to albatrosses with wingspans of 12 feet, flying thousands of miles.
And so there's something about the breadth of their biology and ecology that makes them very just sort of compelling characters.
And also in the sense that they live, they exist and persist at the top, often near the top of food webs.
And so many of the changes that are occurring at sort of lower trophic levels, like things that radiate up from phytoplankton to zooplankton to small fish to all the things that seabirds eat and need to live, they manifest in a seabird's life and how well it is able to raise chicks and how long it lives and whether or not it gets covered with oil and whether or not it gets caught as a bycatch in a fishery.
And so because of that visibility, you know, that makes them fascinating to look at, fascinating to study, and fascinating to try to learn from.
And so that's how that idea of the sentinel species and seabirds as being excellent sentinels, that's where it comes from.
So that's one of the things where often seabirds are responding to fairly small changes.
You know, a lot of the there's some interesting things about seabird life history and that there are long lived species.
You know, many live, you know, you've heard of wisdom, the albatross who's been breeding for something like 60 years.
Their biology accommodates this notion that they're going to be good years and bad years.
You know, they're not always going to be able to raise as many chicks as they would like.
But it seems like lately, owing to a number of climate factors, increased marine temperatures, shifting prey ranges, that climate change is really becoming, not becoming, is a huge factor in seabird life history and conservation.
And so within the Salish Sea, we're seeing warming waters and shifting prey movements.
And how long have these prey movements been changing? Do you have a time frame for that?
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