Devney (Erwin) and Congdon, 2007:

"Ominous predictions of the impacts of global warming on marine ecosystems, from highly productive polar oceans to tropical coral reefs, have put seabirds in the limelight as indicators of broader marine impacts of climate fluctuations.

For 20 to 30 years, seabird monitoring in Australia has focussed on colonies of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and adjacent Coral Sea Islands, in south-western Australia, and in Bass Strait. These programs have shown that seasonal, or longer-term, changes to seabird reproduction patterns are linked to large-scale oceanographic processes, such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and increased average sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Key demographic and reproductive parameters have been impacted, including population size, timing of breeding, year-to-year recruitment and breeding participation, as well as hatching and fledging success.

Substantial population declines have been observed for many species that breed at low to mid-latitude (tropical and subtropical) colonies (see map). The most dramatic include reductions in breeding populations of over 85 per cent for Brown Boobies in the Swains reefs, southern GBR, and between 35 and 25 per cent for two pelagic foraging tern species at Michaelmas Cay, northern GBR. In the Swains these declines have been attributed to one or two significant El Nino events in the 1980s from which the populations are yet to recover, while at Michaelmas Cay they have been directly correlated with ENSO intensity over the past 20 years. Over the same period, breeding populations of the majority of taxa breeding at Raine Island, far northern GBR, and of Frigatebirds in the Coral Sea, have also significantly decreased."

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Citation and/or URL

Devney (Erwin), CA. and Congdon, BC. 2007, ‘Demographic and Reproductive Impacts on Seabirds?’, The State of Australia’s Birds 2007 – Birds in a Changing Climate, Birds Australia. 

Spatial Coverage

 Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area

Temporal Coverage

 >20 years

Update Frequency

 Not applicable 

Other Information

None