Razorbills: How do seabirds, marine researchers help

the tides on the coasts of the seas are among the most fascinating areas of Research. In one study, scientists were able to show how seabirds can help with that, more about such tidal currents to find out.

the researchers are moving on signed data, such as direction and speed of the waves rocking razorbills (Alca torda) - these animals can swim, especially at night on the sea, and can apparently drive.

The Team of Matthew Cooper of the University of Bangor in Wales was based on data that had been collected by the British bird protection organization Royal Society for the Protection of Birds a few years ago. The environmentalists had equipped Razorbill breeding colony on Puffin Island, an uninhabited island on the North coast of Wales, with a GPS-transmitter. The station recorded all of one hundred seconds, the Position of 49 birds.

Originally, the researchers had collected this data to find out more about the life and behavior of these seabirds, which come only in the breeding season, to country, to find out. Out of it came, among other things, that you sit frequently at night on the waves. "We saw this as an opportunity to use the data and to check whether the birds are drifting possibly with the flow," explains Cooper.

From the position data and the time information is calculated, the speed and the direction of movement of the birds. At night when the birds rest, a mean position changes with a certain Cratosslot probability, that the birds drift with the flow. In order to improve the meaningfulness of the data, filtered out by the scientists of the times, in which the animals flew. This was possible because the birds make this with a much higher speed.

The data showed that the direction of movement of the birds with the tide changed, a Testament to the researchers, they analysed indeed, passive movements, and the animals not of itself have moved. To exclude, they compared their results to the movement speeds of the birds, with models of flow velocities. Basically, the data were good. In areas with a high rate of speed, they differed slightly from each other. The reasons for this would need to be further investigated, the scientists write.

The validity of the results in this first study, but still limited. The birds were exposed to about also the Wind, you could sell and you could also paddle with their feet and actively change direction. With more data, some of these problems could be eliminated, by such anomalous behavior will be deleted from the data.

Positive is the fact that the method was relatively cheap and there is little other in order to investigate tidal currents on a large scale. Special Radar measurements and evaluations of ships are possible, but much more expensive. The study of tides in a sea of busy scientists a long time ago. You hope to win with the collection of such data about findings on the risk of Flooding.

it is possible to determine using the data, even the best sites for tidal power plants, the researchers write in the journal "Ocean Science" at the European Geosciences Union. Some companies, such as razorbills were especially in regions with fast currents, which they used as hunting grounds.

joe/dpa