M. T. MYERS 



combine with the amateur element, so that 

 any one of them can continue the work if any 

 other element should be incapacitated. At any 

 one time, either the amateur or the govern- 

 ment or the university personnel may be the 

 prime mover, and each of these forms now 

 exists in various countries. 



What the scientific literature in the fields of 

 the geophysical, atmospheric, and oceano- 

 graphic disciplines demonstrates is that natu- 

 ral climatic oscillations probably range in 

 length from the 11 -year sunspot cycle through 

 several decades (or a human lifetime) to 

 several hundred years. So, when our children 

 are the new trustees of seabird colonies 20 or 

 40 years hence, they must interpret their data 

 using the full range of physical as well as bio- 

 logical data that we can leave for them. In- 

 deed, the information is, I believe, already 

 available over a long enough period (since 

 1940 at least) to allow some speculative inter- 

 pretations of what may have been happening 

 to our seabird populations, whether or not we 

 knew or had any evidence of it. 



I have already suggested that extraterres- 

 trial events, particularly the 11-year sunspot 

 cycle, are increasingly believed to influence 

 the atmosphere of this planet. The Chinese 

 and Japanese have remarkably precise rec- 

 ords of the northern limits of certain agricul- 

 tural crops at particular times, the phenology 

 of flowering, and the freezing of lakes. These 

 demonstrate long-term trends in overall cli- 

 mate in eastern Asia that extend over hun- 

 dreds of years. The climate of Japan is influ- 

 enced by the high-pressure area in winter over 

 mainland East Asia. There is evidence that 

 severe ice conditions in the Bering Sea during 

 the early 1970's may have been due to an east- 

 ward shifting of this high-pressure area. 

 Again, the water mass of the Kuroshio Exten- 

 sion and the West Wind Drift takes several 

 years to travel across the Pacific Ocean, and 

 there is an established temperature variation 

 that travels like a slow wave with it. Off 

 Japan, the Kuroshio Current periodically de- 

 velops meanders which slow the speed of the 

 eastward flow. Cold and warm "pools" of 

 water approach the west coast of Canada and 

 the western United States from time to time. 



Ocean currents are driven by the atmos- 

 pheric motion above them, which consists of 

 several convective cells between the equator 



and each pole. The outcome is zonal winds, 

 such as the trade winds and the westerlies. 

 However, as the influence of the sun on the at- 

 mosphere is variable, the input of heat and the 

 extent of the major high-pressure areas vary, 

 as does the path of the jet stream. The recent 

 droughts in northern Africa and unusually 

 heavy rains in Australia are both linked to a 

 southward shift of the Intertropical Conver- 

 gence Zone in the atmosphere and a "corruga- 

 tion" of the wind circulation from a more nor- 

 mal zonal (latitudinal) path. These shifts in 

 the atmospheric circulation are almost cer- 

 tainly transmitted also to the ocean currents 

 and the marine ecosystem, with the influence 

 being felt for a long period of years. 



One of the oceanic domains of the North 

 Pacific is the transitional domain, which lies 

 east-west where the West Wind Drift im- 

 pinges upon the coasts of British Columbia 

 and Washington State. It is precisely in this 

 sector that there was a well-documented 

 "temperature anomaly" in 1957-58. Since an 

 anomaly implies something completely out of 

 the ordinary, I seriously question the appro- 

 priateness of the term for an event that may 

 or may not be recurrent (at the time it was a 

 pronounced variation from the oceanographic 

 records accumulated up to that time, but the 

 period had not been a very long one). It is no 

 coincidence that the numbers of albatrosses 

 recorded at Ocean Weather Station "Papa" 

 was higher during this warmwater "anomaly" 

 than subsequently (indeed, an 18-year record 

 of the seabirds recorded at "Papa" also ex- 

 hibits other interesting fluctuations from the 

 base-line data in certain years). 



Recent analyses of sediments from off the 

 coast of California have demonstrated long- 

 term fluctuations in sardine populations ex- 

 tending back at least 1,800 years, with in- 

 creases lasting 20-150 years and spaced 

 20-200 years apart. The number of anchovies 

 declined steadily. Yet until now, El Nino 

 events have been treated as anomalies in that 

 region as well as off the coast of Peru. Just as 

 we recognize that different species of fish fol- 

 low the warm water north on such occasions, 

 we must also recognize the rather distinct sea- 

 bird species assemblage that is trapped, as it 

 were, in the Gulf of California. Clearly, like 

 the termination point of the West Wind Drift 

 at about the 45-55 parallel, the coast of Baja 



