Why is it important to count dead seabirds and marine mammals?
By counting dead seabirds and marine mammals, we are able to document mortality factors (causes of death) for these marine animals. This gives us important information about animals that are often difficult to study because they inhabit the ocean (a difficult place to work) and range over large areas. Some mortality factors may be due to human activities and if we know how many animals are being killed, we can determine if it is a serious threat and then alert management agencies to take appropriate actions. With Beach COMBER surveys, we can quantify the relative impacts of different mortality factors. For example, in 1997, many more common murres were found washed up on beaches in the sanctuary than would be expect from just natural causes. Because we were able to quantify the deposition of murres in a standardized manner, we were able to identify an unusual mortality factor, in this case an increase in gill net fishing in southern Monterey Bay which was catching murres in their nets.
