- 2005 End of Year Update

A polar bear again pays a midwinter visit to the Friends of Cooper Island (FCI) cabin and the Army Corps puts a high price on Cooper Island sediments in early spring.  The 2005 field season marked the start of important collaborations with other researchers (both biologists and physical scientists). While the Arctic saw a record retreat of pack ice in late summer 2005, anomalous local atmospheric circulation kept the pack ice near Cooper Island, providing Black Guillemots enough arctic cod to have their best breeding season in years - but Horned Puffins still ascendant.   

An April visit to clean up after a polar bear and attend an Army Corps meeting in Barrow

As in 2004, our 2005 field season began with an April snow machine trip from the village of Barrow over Elson Lagoon to Cooper Island.  Native hunters passing by the island in late winter saw trash strewn near the cabin and other bear sign. In early April when I was in Barrow to attend a public meeting of the Army Corps of Engineers I went out to the island with Keith Williams, of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, to assess the damage.  The bear had removed the plywood covering the entrance and we found the inside of the cabin in disarray with a four-foot snowdrift inside the door.  Luckily there was no major structural damage to the cabin and we shoveled out most of the the snow to prevent water damage from occurring in the spring thaw. 

The Army Corps meeting in Barrow was a summary of their assessment of gravel sources considered for rebuilding the Barrow shoreline.  The increase in coastal erosion in northern Alaska is an immediate effect of ongoing climate change and is affecting or threatening coastal villages over much of the northern margin of the state. The increased erosion is due to melting permafrost reducing integrity of ocean-facing bluffs while pack ice decrease lengthens the period shorelines are exposed to wave action and increases the wave size. While Cooper Island is one of the potential sources of sediments being considered for Barrow beaches, it would cost $75 per cubic yard to transport the sediments from Cooper and position them next to the village or a total of $150 million for the entire  Barrow beach nourishment project.  Cooper Island has had its own beach erosion issues (see our 2003 report) with a fall storm in 2002 having major impact on the north and eastern edge of the island. No new major erosion episodes occurred in 2004 or 2005, however.

An interesting byproduct of the Army Corps' assessment of Cooper Island, was their investigation of the island's cultural resources. A survey in the fall of 2004 found artifacts on the island indicating it may have one of the few pre-contact (greater than 250 years old) house sites on the Beaufort Sea coast. Surprisingly the same people making the assessment of cultural resources thought that my field camp (and associated nest boxes) might qualify for a place on the National Register for Historic Places!  Biological assessment has been limited to two nearshore fish surveys, but if our two years of data are representative the FCI cabin interior might be thought of as critical habitat for polar bears.

Another episode involving government interest in the island (or in this case lack of interest) played out in late 2004 as a nonpartisan foreign policy watchdog group demonstrated that there was no documentation asserting U.S. sovereignty over Cooper Island.  The British had claimed the island in the mid-1800s and theoretically turned it over to Canada in 1880.  While the watchdog group provided the story to a number of Canadian media outlets and officials, there was no major groundswell by Canadians to occupy or assert ownership of the island.  The story adds an interesting subplot to the island's history but is unlikely to have any effect on how the island is administered.  

  Arctic Ocean experiences a record ice retreat but local conditions good for guillemots and puffins

The retreat of pack ice during the 2002-2004 breeding seasons resulted in major reductions in breeding success for Cooper Island Black Guillemots in all three years.  This continued a trend starting in 1990 during which breeding success at the colony has not been sufficient to maintain a stable population without immigration.  In 2002 a storm from the south blew the pack ice well offshore in a 24-hour period in mid-August.  While we were waiting to see how this sudden shift in ice conditions would affect the parents who no longer could provide their young with ice-associated arctic cod, we found out instead that large numbers of polar bears had been stranded on the beach.  In an exciting two-day period bears ended up eating all of the guillemot and puffin nestlings and chasing us off the island.  In 2003 and 2004 ice retreat was more gradual and less exciting but occurred early in the nestling period. The wide-scale starvation of chicks in those years was apparently due to the paucity of fish for parents to find in ice-free waters. 2003 and 2004 years also saw increased prospecting by Horned Puffins, that are more at home in the ice-free seas, and approximately one third of all guillemot chicks were killed by nonbreeding puffins.

Compared to most breeding seasons in the last decade, the summer of 2005 was a huge success for guillemots. The number of breeding pairs (150) was similar indicating that immigration from other colonies is preventing a decrease in numbers. Egg laying occurred relatively late due to a high pressure system in the Beaufort Sea reducing southerly winds and temperatures in the Barrow region.  This system persisted throughout the summer and while the rest of the state was having one of its summers on record, temperatures near Barrow were near normal. Similarly, while the Arctic Pack ice saw a record retreat in 2005, ice remained near the island for much of the nestling period.  Prior to the first south winds at the end of the first week in August, chicks were fed almost exclusively arctic cod (>95%) but for the rest of the nestling period chicks were fed a combination of arctic cod and nearshore bottom dwelling fish species.  The latter were the only prey available in the past two years, when many chicks starved, but in 2005 the less pronounced retreat of the pack ice allowed parents to supplement the diet with enough arctic cod to allow successful fledging with over one chick per nest fledging per nest. 

Horned Puffins, which first bred in arctic Alaska in 1986. continued their colonization of the island with two successful nests in 2005.  The number and activities of nonbreeding puffins were both reduced in 2005, perhaps due to the proximity of pack ice.  While approximately a third of all guillemot chicks were killed by puffins in 2003 and 2004, in 2005 less than a quarter of the chicks were victims of the puffins.  Our observations of puffin parents feeding their chicks late in late August and early September showed they were returning to the nest with capelin, a subarctic fish that is probably increasing in the Arctic as water temperatures warm and sea ice retreats.

The year marks the start of a collaboration with the University of Manitoba and also brings physical scientists to the island

For a number of years we have hoped to increase the scope of our work on the island by involving other investigators and institutions.  This summer saw a major step in that direction as we began a collaboration with Gail Davoren, a seabird and fisheries biologist on the faculty at the University of Manitoba.  Gail has conducted research on subarctic seabirds in both British Columbia and Newfoundland investigating breeding biology and predator-prey interactions.  Since finishing her doctorate and moving to Winnipeg, she as had a desire to expand her research to  higher latitude seabirds and marine ecosystems, both directly and through her graduate students.

The assistant FCI hired for the 2005 fieldwork, Britt Harter, is now pursuing a graduate degree with Gail.  Britt graduated with a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from Yale in 2003 and will be back on Cooper in 2006 to conduct his graduate research. His work will focus on daily changes in nestling growth and parental feeding behavior (prey type and size) in relation to ice and other environmental factors. 

The 2005 field season also saw other arctic researchers realize the potential of Cooper Island as a platform for conducting nearshore ocean research.  Oceanographic sampling in the arctic is hindered by a number of constraints, primarily related to the logistics of operating a vessel in waters covered with ice for much of the year.  Walt Oechel and his lab at San Diego State University have been studying the carbon flux of tundra for over thirty years.  His findings include the documentation of a shift from the tundra being a carbon sink, which absorbed more carbon during photosynthesis than it released in decomposition, to a source, which annually releases more carbon in carbon dioxide and methane than it absorbs.  This increased release of greenhouse gases as a result of atmospheric warming driven by greenhouse gases is one of the positive feedback loops that can increase the rate of climate change.  Whether the Arctic Ocean itself is a carbon sink or source is a major issue and is important when examining global carbon budgets. Kirstin Skadberg (on tower to right) is a doctoral student working with Walt and is measuring the carbon flux at the ocean's surface using instrumentation on Cooper Island. 

Media and political interest in northern Alaska, climate change and Cooper Island

The issue of climate change received increasing interest from politicians and the media through 2005 with Hurricane Katrina providing a wake up call to those who have forgotten how vulnerable humans are to both the patterns and vagaries of the atmosphere.  The response of Cooper Island's seabirds to arctic warming received its share of attention as two Seattle Times reporters, Craig Welch and Steve Ringman, went out to the island when we set up camp in June.  While on the island for only two days they assisted in a range of logistical tasks (including picking up after the polar bear and erecting the 30-foot "carbon flux" tower) while obtaining information and photos for a story on Cooper Island that was part of a larger overview of sweeping changes reshaping the Arctic. 

Later in the summer ABC News reporter Bill Blakemore was able to come out to Cooper Island for a day visit.  The information and video obtained by him and his crew were used when ABC reported on two recent arctic climate stories receiving national attention. The first was the late September announcement by NASA of a record decrease in late summer pack ice extend and a decrease of 8.5 percent per decade since 1978.  The ABC Nightly News coverage featured stories of warming from Barrow and vicinity and included scenes from the Cooper Island guillemot colony.  In mid December Cooper Island seabirds were featured on ABC News Nightline on the day NASA announced 2005 was tied with 1998 as the warmest year on record and three conservation groups sued the U.S. government to have polar bears listed as endangered  — due to the melting pack ice. That video is now available by clicking here and then clicking on the "Big Melt Video" link on the left side of the page.

Late August saw a congressional delegation including Senators Clinton and McCain visit Barrow as part of a trip to view the impacts of climate change in the north.  A planned helicopter visit to Cooper Island was turned back by fog and rain. The group's visit to Alaska showed how the issue of climate change is being viewed as an issue of national importance. 

Thanks

This summer’s fieldwork would not have been possible without the support of the generous contributors to Friends of Cooper Island. Our heartfelt thanks to all who have provided financial and moral support. If you would like to contribute to our work, donations can be sent to our address below (the preferred method) or from our website. FCI is a 501(c)(3) and your donation is tax deductible. If you would like to be informed of FCI news or events (we don't send more then four emails a year) please send an email to subscribe@cooperisland.org.

The logistics of maintaining a field camp on a remote arctic island requires the help and understanding of a wide range of people and institutions.  Critical to this past summer's work was the ongoing support of the North Slope Borough (NSB) and Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC). The NSB’s Department of Wildlife Management (Director Charlie Brower, and wildlife biologists, Craig George and Robert Suydam) and BASC personnel (Executive Director Glenn Sheehan; Richard Glenn, Bob Bulger, Henry Gueco and Alice Brower) provide many of the logistical miracles needed to maintain FCI’s work on a remote Arctic island.

Also thanks to those who came to our Annual Update event in Seattle on 9 November.  The evening provided an excellent time to talk to people individually about our work and included Seattle author Lesley Thomas reading from her book Flight of the Goose, a tale of climate change in an arctic Alaska native village.

Have a good 2006.

George Divoky

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