Renner Heather M, Piatt John F, Renner Martin, Drummond Brie A, Laufenberg Jared S, Parrish Julia K
Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, Homer, AK, USA.
World Puffin Congress, Port Townsend, WA, USA.
Science. 2024 Dec 13;386(6727):1272-1276. doi: 10.1126/science.adq4330. Epub 2024 Dec 12.
Recent marine heatwaves have had pervasive effects on marine ecosystems, from declines in primary production to die-offs of top predators. Seabird mortalities are often observed in association with heatwaves, but population impacts are not well understood. In this work, we report the rapid mortality of approximately half of Alaska's common murre () population in response to an extreme marine heatwave. Between the 7-year period before (2008-2014) and after (2016-2022) the heatwave, murre numbers plummeted 52 to 78% at 13 colonies across two large marine ecosystems. We calculated a loss of 4.00 million common murres, the largest documented wildlife mortality event in the modern era. No evidence of recovery has yet been observed, suggesting that these ecosystems may no longer support historic numbers of seabird top predators.
近期的海洋热浪对海洋生态系统产生了广泛影响，从初级生产力下降到顶级捕食者的死亡。海鸟死亡事件经常与热浪相关联，但对种群的影响尚不清楚。在这项研究中，我们报告了阿拉斯加大约一半的普通海鸦（）种群因一场极端海洋热浪而迅速死亡。在热浪发生前的7年期间（2008 - 2014年）和之后的7年期间（2016 - 2022年），在两个大型海洋生态系统的13个繁殖地，海鸦数量暴跌了52%至78%。我们计算出损失了400万只普通海鸦，这是现代有记录以来最大的野生动物死亡事件。目前尚未观察到恢复的迹象，这表明这些生态系统可能不再能支持历史数量的海鸟顶级捕食者。
