Dying and dead seabirds on Alaska coast expose growing threats of climate change: "The food chain is changing rapidly"

Dead and dying seabirds collected on the coasts of the northern Bering and southern Chukchi seas over the past six years reveal how the Arctic's fast-changing climate is threatening the ecosystems and people who live there, according to a report released Tuesday by U.S. scientists.

Local communities have reported numerous emaciated bodies of seabirds — including shearwaters, auklets and murres — that usually eat plankton, krill or fish, but appear to have had difficulty finding sufficient food. The hundreds of distressed and dead birds are only a fraction of ones that starved, scientists say.

"Since 2017, we've had multi-species seabird die-offs in the Bering Strait region," said Gay Sheffield, a biologist at University of Alaska Fairbanks, who is based in Nome, Alaska, and a co-author of the report. "The one commonality is emaciation, or starvation."