Death

Mass mortality amongst seabirds is called a wreck. Seabirds are often indicator species whose deaths paint a larger picture of marine ecosystem health. Many COASST participants remember the Common Murre wreck of 2015-2016. Given the baseline data that COASST has been collecting for 20 years, they are able to note when a wreck has occurred. People who have been a part of these events mark time with them. Both the emotional investment in witnessing a mass die-off event as well as the labor necessary to account for so many birds makes this a memorable event. Death, however, is also natural phenomena frequently used in science to understand lifecycles. Most of the data collected on these dead seabirds signal natural occurrences often referred to as senescence.