An Early Warning System Using Seabirds to Detect Ecosystem Change in the High and Low Arctic

We will capture “downstream” (Labrador Current) influences of High Arctic changes and variability. Changes in the biology of seabirds have already been noted (altered breeding times, deterioration in nutrition and chick condition) with dietary changes involving switches from ice-associated and polar fish to Low Arctic species. Diving and surface-feeding seabirds (murres, fulmars, gannets, storm-petrels) will be studied when foraging over regional scales during summer and when migrating throughout the High and Low Arctic during fall, winter and spring.

The project will use previous surveys of seabird diets throughout Nunavut and Newfoundland and Labrador during the 1970s and 1980s to assess changes that have occurred in High and Low Arctic marine food webs and to establish a current baseline against which future change can be assessed.