Shifting Baselines : Shifting Seabirds For Beachcombers

The Shifting Baselines Blog

Jennifer Jacquet is a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. She works closely with Dr. Daniel Pauly, who coined the term Shifting Baselines, the syndrome on which this blog focuses.
Josh Donlan is a conservation scientist and a Visting Fellow at Cornell University. He often hides out in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains, pondering bygone giant beavers and ground sloths. He also is also the founder and Director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and has a habit of restoring remote islands.

Scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olson, founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project is also a blog contributor.

Search this blog

New Projects & Publications

July 26, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the East Coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival in MA.

July 22, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "A Way Forward in a Sea of Market Based Initiatives to Save Wild Fish" at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.

July 19, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the West Coast at Outfest in Hollywood, CA.

July 17, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "In Hot Soup: Shark's Captured in Ecuador's Waters" at the Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, TN.

July 9, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Flawed Data, Reef Fisheries, And Food Security: A Close Inspection Of Marine Fisheries Catches in Mozambique, Tanzania, Fiji, And The Solomon Islands" at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

June/July 2008: Josh Donlan attends training for his Kinship Conservation Fellowship in Bellingham, WA.

May 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Ambio titled High impact Conservation: Invasive Mammal Eradications from the Islands of Western Mexico.

May 15, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet reviews Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood at the Tyee.

April 2008: Trade Secrets: Renaming and Mislabeling of Seafood by Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly is published in Marine Policy.

April 2008: Randy Olson and the Puget Sound Partnership release the flash video Shifting Baselines in the Sound:.

Mar. 2008: Dr. Josh Donlan joins the Shifting Baselines blog.

Jan. 2008 Jennifer Jacquet launches the Eat Like a Pig Seafood Wallet Card

Online Resources and Blogs

« Noisy Fish | Main | Shifting Baselines in the Hood »

Shifting Seabirds For Beachcombers

Category: Solutions
Posted on: April 9, 2008 5:00 AM, by Josh Donlan

Here's one for all you beachcombers out there. The organization COASST (Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team) is busy establishing a baseline on a beach near you. And they want your help.

COASST is a partnership between volunteer members of the general public and academic scientists. Carefully trained volunteers walk the same stretch of beach each month, collecting data on beach-cast seabird carcasses, as well as debris, humans, dogs, vehicles, and oil. The data are sent to a University of Washington lab where they are vetted for accuracy and added to a central database. COASST makes those data available to conservation and management scientists, as well as producing quarterly and annual reports for the volunteers, providing a 'bird's eye' perspective on the beaches they've been walking-a larger scale view on trends in seabird biology and coastal ecosystem processes. The data are particular valuable in that they offer a baseline for seabird mortality and phenology against which the effect of stressors, from an oil spill to El Nino events or climate change, can be measured. COASST monitors beaches from Eureka to the Canadian border, as well as a growing number of points in Alaska, more than 400 beaches in all.