Seabirds and Other Seafood Lovers By Carl Safina I got a letter
from the United States Federal Bird Banding Laboratory. (Yes
there is such a thing.) I was pretty surprised. In the 1980s I
studied seabirds and hawks, and I banded many thousands of
birds. But that was a long while back. I no longer have a
banding license—though I miss those days—and I haven’t put a
band on a bird’s leg in 20 years. So I wasn’t expecting bird-
banding mail. I opened it and became informed that a Common Tern
I’d banded 25 years ago as a chick was breeding this past
summer, on an island about 80 miles northeast of where it
hatched. Wow. A few years ago, this would have been the species’
longevity record, which, I learned, now stands at 27 years. When
I was studying seabirds in grad school, there came a flurry of
published studies on the relationship of birds to fisheries.
There are 4 general dynamics: 1) birds catch fish, thereby
competing with fisheries; 2) fisheries compete with seabirds,
catching fish that seabirds need, thus lo