Pelagic seabirds reduce risk by flying into the eye of the storm.

ABSTRACT: Cyclones can cause mass mortality of seabirds, sometimes wrecking thousands of individuals. The few studies to track pelagic seabirds during cyclones show they tend to circumnavigate the strongest winds. We tracked adult shearwaters in the Sea of Japan over 11 y and found that the response to cyclones varied according to the wind speed and direction. In strong winds, birds that were sandwiched between the storm and mainland Japan flew away from land and toward the eye of the storm, flying within ≤30 km of the eye and tracking it for up to 8 h. This exposed shearwaters to some of the highest wind speeds near the eye wall (≤21 m s^-1) but enabled them to avoid strong onshore winds in the storm's wake. Extreme winds may therefore become a threat when an inability to compensate for d

SUBMITTER: Lempidakis E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9565516 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature