Counting Birds From Open Boats on Katmai’s Winter Coast

Mt. Steller and Kukak Volcano from Hallo Bay beach (NPS photo).

Why would anyone head out on Alaska's coast in March? Because the birds that winter along the shoreline are not the birds of summer, and a park that counts only in the gentler season gets a skewed picture of who uses its coast. This is the first part of a personal account by Deanna Ochs, a science communicator for the National Park Service, who joined the 2018 Katmai National Park Winter Marine Bird Survey. It was Ochs's first survey, and Ochs was fairly new to Alaska and to field work.

The team surveyed Katmai's coast from Cape Douglas (top right) to Geographic Harbor (bottom left). Image from NPS's page.

Why survey in winter

For more than a decade, the National Park Service, the US Geological Survey and Gulf Watch Alaska have worked together to monitor marine birds along the shorelines of Katmai and Kenai Fjords national parks. The surveys run every year in summer and twice a year in winter.

Alaska's coastal waters serve as pantry, nursery and real estate for thousands of marine species, and many birds rely on them through the long winter. Birds that come out of winter well fed are more likely to breed successfully. Because they eat mussels, clams and other invertebrates there, they are also good indicators of change in marine ecosystems.

The nearshore is open to disturbance such as oil spills and a changing climate. In 2016 the survey crew recorded huge numbers of dead seabirds along Katmai's coast, and the results later showed that they had starved during a period of unusually high ocean temperatures that hurt their food sources. That made this year's results of particular interest. The surveys also show where birds gather and which species are likely to be there, which helps park managers plan protections for sensitive areas against oil spills, development and changing shipping lanes.

Day one: seas, seasickness and cameras

It was a mild winter, for Alaska, but the team still wore Mustang suits, buoyant cold-weather boating suits. The team's base was the Dream Catcher, which left Homer's marina late on March 14 and crossed Cook Inlet toward Cape Douglas, with surveys to begin at first light.

The peaks of Cape Douglas, seen through the Dream Catcher's windows, show how rugged the land is (NPS photo by D. Ochs).

By morning the sea was churning, and the boat lurched up one side of each wave and shuddered down the other. By 11:00 am Ochs had stopped expecting breakfast to stay down and lay on the cool floor at the back of the boat to sleep off the seasickness. Three hours later Ochs woke to calm and the smell of food.

After lunch the team loaded two skiffs for seven people. While the others loaded the skiffs, Ochs was still squeezing into the Mustang suit, then crossed the deck dropping hand warmers along the way. The sun was warm and the water deep turquoise when they set off at 5:00 pm. One skiff went to survey birds. The other went to find cameras that had been taking a photo every few minutes since July at popular haul-out sites, to document bears preying on seals and sea otters. Because access to these areas is limited, researchers often run several studies on one trip.

While some crew tended the cameras, two people walked the beaches looking for bird carcasses, which would be bagged and taken back for examination. Large numbers of them could point to another mass die-off, and the beaches looked carcass-free, a hopeful sign compared with 2016, when every section walked had been littered with dead birds. The cameras proved too hard to open in the field, so the team hauled them back to the skiff in the dusk.

Fishing gear on one of the Katmai beaches the team surveyed. The crew found trash on every beach. Animals swallow plastic or get caught in fishing gear, and often die (NPS photo by D. Ochs).

Day two: ice and the data keeper

At 8:00 am both skiffs went out to survey, under gray skies and a cold drizzle, cutting through newly formed sheets of ice. Four people rode in Ochs's skiff. One steered and scouted for birds, a second counted birds, and a third entered the data in a rugged field computer. That day's work was five stretches of coastline, called transects, in Kukak Bay.

On the first transect the counters began calling out sightings in the shorthand of the survey: four white-winged scoters on the water, one long-tailed duck in the air, six emperor geese on land. The data keeper had to decipher the bird codes, type with numb bare fingers and wipe the rain-spattered screen with wet sleeves, and stayed accurate. Heather Coletti, a National Park Service marine ecologist and one of the survey's designers, had told Ochs, "We are collecting truth." The data would be combed over later, but Ochs still squirmed at the thought of taking a turn at the keyboard.

A long-tailed duck rests on icy water (NPS photo by C. Mills).

The cold and damp never let up, but there were high points. Creeping into quiet coves at low motor speed, the crew found flocks of birds and heard long-tailed ducks calling between rocky outcrops, a sound Ochs calls "ethereal." In one bay six emperor geese stood in a row on an exposed rock, their white necks bright against a gloomy horizon.

Emperor geese make a striking sight against a bleak background (NPS photo by D. Kurtz).

After seven hours Ochs's skiff finished its transects and turned back toward the Dream Catcher. After a late lunch the leader announced three more transects for that day, and four people raised their hands to do them. For Ochs, the newcomer, it felt like boot camp with colleagues who had been in the trenches long enough to like the taste of grit. Part one ends with the author asking readers for a better word than "ethereal" for the long-tailed duck's call.

Sources

• National Park Service, Katmai National Park and Preserve, "Winter Marine Bird Survey - Part I" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/katmai-terrane.htm), by Deanna Ochs; rewritten in hubnx's own words.