SYMPOSIUM SUMMARY 



311 



we do things that cause substantial adult 

 mortality. A second is that seabird popula- 

 tions can recover well with protection and 

 modest management although most of 

 them, being slow breeders, recover slowly. A 

 third lesson is that in the last 30 years we 

 have caused substantial damage through oil 

 spills, human disturbance at the breeding 

 colonies, chemical pollution, and indirectly by 

 promoting the spread of gulls. Much has been 

 said at the conference about these present- 

 day human impacts. However, with the sole 

 exception of the oil spills which have affected 

 alcids and sea ducks in parts of northwest 

 Europe, it seems to me that the damage 

 caused by human activity in the past 30 years 

 is considerably less than that in the last 30 

 years of the 19th century. 



Another lesson we can learn from the recent 

 experience in other areas is that it is possible 

 to ameliorate some of these adverse human 

 impacts with local, small-scale, and even 

 rather amateurish management activities 

 for example, protecting seabird colonies from 

 gulls, regulating human visits, and control- 

 ling the use of the most toxic chemicals. Our 

 most conspicuous failure is in controlling oil 

 pollution. Although safety precautions im- 

 posed on offshore drilling rigs and at shipping 

 terminals have proved reasonably effective in 

 averting major damage to seabirds, attempts 

 to control oil pollution during transportation 

 have been essentially fruitless. Tanker acci- 

 dents and deliberate discharges from vessels 

 remain the major threat to seabird 

 populations. 



Another lesson from other areas is that pub- 

 lic education has been very effective in put- 

 ting pressure behind conservation measures, 

 and is doing so increasingly. At the same 

 time, however, it is resulting in an increase of 

 the disturbances that the birds suffer at their 

 breeding grounds from casual visitors, 

 photographers, and sometimes, well-meaning 

 naturalists. 



Finally, in very recent years, there have 

 been encouraging developments in rehabili- 

 tating oiled birds, captive breeding, and rein- 

 troduction into areas from which they have 

 been depleted. Restoration of seabird popula- 

 tions no longer seems an impossible goal. 



Conservation Needs for 

 North Pacific Seabirds 



We now know enough about the seabirds of 

 the northern North Pacific to specify in prin- 

 ciple what should be done immediately to con- 

 serve them. I will not address the institu- 

 tional arrangements needed for conservation; 

 R. E. LeResche's paper presented a very clear 

 picture of the institutional problems involved 

 in protecting and managing seabirds on an in- 

 terregional and international basis. I will 

 simply endorse his principal recommendation: 

 that we should try to bring the various re- 

 sponsible agencies together to formulate com- 

 prehensive management plans. 



On the level at which we as individuals and 

 as a group of biologists can work, we can al- 

 ready make some positive recommendations. 

 The most important is that since prevention 

 of damage is a lot better than cure, measures 

 to avert damage should have the highest 

 priority. We have heard a great deal from the 

 oil industry about the "inevitability" of acci- 

 dents. One speaker mentioned the "inherent 

 fallibility of man." Well, we are all fallible, but 

 the experience of the last 50 years is that 

 some people are more fallible than others. No 

 oil company has a perfect record, but some 

 have 10 times as many accidents as the best, 

 and some, I believe, have considerably more 

 than 10 times as many. This means, very 

 simply, that it is possible to eliminate most 

 not all, but most of the major threats to the 

 seabirds, merely by upgrading the safety per- 

 formance of the entire industry to that al- 

 ready achieved by its best segments. I sug- 

 gest that our major challenge in the coming 

 years is to work for effective regulation of the 

 industry: to achieve regulations which will de- 

 cisively penalize bad performance and as deci- 

 sively reward care. 



Perhaps the second priority in conservation 

 is to protect and manage the existing breed- 

 ing colonies. In most cases protection is 

 legally feasible if we have the will. Most of the 

 major colonies are in remote areas or in public 

 ownership where development and dis- 

 turbance can be controlled. Management of 

 the breeding populations is less straightfor- 

 ward, however, because we do not know 



