Kate Wing's Blog
It's a small sea after all
August 19, 2007
Posted by Kate Wing in Reviving the World's Oceans
There's so much to love in this story about a steelhead tag from the Columbia River found in the stomach of a baby sooty shearwater in New Zealand. For example, the map showing you where New Zealand is, in case you had forgotten.
Shearwaters are hard-working birds that fly across the Pacific Ocean many times during their lives, and adult shearwaters are known to gather at the mouth of the Columbia River when the salmon are running. So it's not all that surprising that a mama or papa shearwater regurgitated a tag into its fluffy babe. But it is a wonderful reminder of the window into the lives of seabirds and sharks and turtles and narwhals and all kinds of fish that these tiny tags provide. If the local Maori had eaten an adult shearwater instead, they might have found themselves tagged as well, since scientists have been tracking the birds too, and not just their prey.
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