UK (Commonwealth Union) – As humans, the first instinct for most of us would be to avoid confronting a storm by any means possible, which may not be the case for seabirds.
A new study led by Swansea University has seen certain pelagic seabirds fly directly into the eye of a storm, which scientists believe may prevent them from being forced onto land masses, bringing down their risk of injury or death.
Professor Emily Shepard and Dr Emmanouil Lempidakis, from the Biosciences Department of Swansea University joined hands with academics from Nagoya University, the University of Leeds and Nagoya Institute of Technology to look into how shearwaters (long-winged seabirds) counter tropical cyclones and storms in the Sea of Japan, near the most active cyclone basin worldwide, the Northwest Pacific.
Researchers tagged adult shearwaters for more than 11 years and analyzed their GPS tracks linked to the wind.
Cyclones have anti-clockwise movements in the Northern Hemisphere, so if the birds had stayed in their original area, they may well have ended up in the strong onshore winds behind the storm eye. This could shift the birds over land, a dangerous prospect with possible crashing’s, uncontrolled landings, and facing predators.
The findings demonstrated that the birds frequently moved towards the storm center where wind speeds are at its peak, even with the strongest typhoon in the study period. “We were astonished when we saw from the GPS tracks that shearwaters were flying towards the eye of the storm, and sometimes tracking it for several hours. This is unlike any response to storms that has been seen before in seabirds,” said Professor Emily Shepard, who also has expertise in movement ecology of wild animals.
The findings indicate how these birds may need to have knowledge of where land is in order to avoid it, which could assist in explaining the reasons, 1000s of juvenile birds get washed up in the fallout of storms.
