Every night, my two faithful research companions and I suit up. We layer survival suits over fleece jackets over wool sweaters over two pairs of thermal underwear, activate our hand warming packs and drop them in our boots. We do one final weather check and head our 15’ zodiac out into Desolation Sound, in search of the elusive Marbled Murrelet. The Marbled Murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus), or MAMU for short, is extremely wary of humans and has proven to be one of the most difficult birds to study. It took 185 years of searching for birders to find the first nest! MAMU are small seabirds who spend most of their life at sea until nesting season, when they fly up to 100km inland every day to a small nest perched on average about 50m above ground in a large old-growth conifer. They aren’t nest-builders as much as they are nest opportunists; they tend to nest in small depressions in the moss of a wide branch, just big enough to fit an egg, with a caring parent settled on top.

MAMU populations have been declining steadily for the past 30 years in North America. Conventional wisdom is that the population decline is due to logging of nesting habitat. This is almost certainly true, however, we believe that there are other threats contributing to the decline of Canada’s MAMU populations. Our research hypothesis is that a decline in forage fish (MAMU food) abundance, has steadily forced MAMU to feed lower down the food chain, and therefore consume smaller and less energetically-rich prey. This in turn- we think, has negatively impacted MAMU breeding success.

In order to test our hypothesis, we spend our nights on the water slowly scanning the waters around Mink Island and Kinghorn Island with a high-powered spotlight. If we are lucky enough to come across a MAMU, we try and sneak up on it using the spotlight to prevent the bird from seeing us. If we get close enough, we scoop up the bird with a large salmon net. We then take some body measurements, a small blood sample and a few feather samples. The bird is released less than 20 minutes after capture and is no worse for wear. The feather and blood samples provide us with stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes which tell us whether the bird has been feeding on high quality prey. We also use the blood sample to detect a protein produced during egg production, which tells us whether the bird is in breeding condition. From these two pieces of information, we can tell whether birds who breed earliest in the season and therefore have higher reproductive success, do so because they are feeding on higher quality prey than other MAMU. We hope that this information will give us an idea of how prey quality influences breeding success. If so, it will be an integral component of effective management aimed at conserving this species for generations to come.

So if you look out your window and see a spot-light on the water slowly scanning from left to right and back again, please, send us