Marine life and seabirds of all sorts, from pelicans and gulls to migratory terns and shearwaters, have amassed off the Santa Cruz coast in recent weeks — flapping, squawking, swirling, and diving …
As an anchovy run continues near the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf this week pelicans, shearwaters, gulls and terns compete for food in a feeding frenzy. SANTA CRUZ — Marine life and seabirds of all sorts, from pelicans and gulls to migratory terns and shearwaters, have amassed off the coast in recent weeks — flapping, squawking, swirling and diving — feathers flying in a feeding frenzy as each creature fights for their share of the anchovies swimming below the ocean’s surface.
Adams mentioned that there can be tens of thousands of sooty shearwaters swirling and shifting off the Santa Cruz coast. Although the birds are based in New Zealand, they make their way to California and Monterey Bay during the summer months to molt and fatten themselves up in order to make the trip back home.
For years, the actual dive depth and duration that the sooty shearwaters can stay underwater were murky statistics until professor of ecology and evolution at San Jose State Scott Shaffer and other researchers used archival tags to measure the birds’ habits in the 2000s when Shaffer was a postdoc researcher at UC Santa Cruz.
Shaffer said that before the sooty shearwaters were tagged, they were thought to travel in a massive circular pattern as the birds tend to show up in California, Alaska and Japan before heading back to New Zealand, but the researchers found that the pattern they followed was more like a figure eight.
Feeding frenzy of pelicans and other birds in the Monterey Bay near the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf this week. “We’ll start seeing them leave now and through the next three weeks or so and then they’ll all be gone,” said Adams. “The anchovies will be somewhat depleted by then because there are a lot of animals eating them, but the anchovies are not leaving our system.”
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