**MUSIC**
Today, I’m going to tell you a story.
The story of the miraculous recovery of a species nearly wiped out here.
The story of ingenious combination of both biology and psychology.
The story of the Murres of Devil’s Slide.
>> ALEX: Hey guys, I’m here at Devil’s Slide in Northern California, let’s get
technical.
Devil’s Slide is a place on the coast of San Mateo, a bit south of San Francisco.
It’s a promontory, which means it’s elevated land which steeply drops into even lower land
or water.
Until it was relocated to this tunnel, this trail right here actually used to be a highway.
People would actually drive next to these crazy steep rocks.
A matter of fact, that’s how Devil’s Slide got its name: because of the many huge rockslides
that would happen on that road.
So, that’s comforting.
One of the best parts of Devil’s Slide is it’s home to tons of mind-blowing wildlife,
from Peregrine Falcons to Humpback Whales to California Sea Lions to...
Common Murres.
Yea, I know they may not seem as cool as Peregrine Falcons, but trust me, they are just as interesting,
if not more so.
See, before the 1980s, Devil’s Slide was filled with murres; they’d all hang out
on this rock, Devil’s Slide Rock, also known as Egg Rock, which is the greatest name for
a rock I think I’ve ever heard.
In 1980, 2,900 breeding murres resided at Devil’s Slide Rock, so can you guess how
many murres were there in 1988, just 8 years later?
Maybe it went up a bit, to around 3,500?
Maybe it went down a bit, to 2,500?
Actually, it dropped to 0.
There were no murres at Devil’s Slide Rock from 1988 to 1995.
Granted, rangers occasionally saw a couple murres here and there, but they never saw
more than 9 and never for a sustained period of time.
Why did murres suffer a local extinction?
2 factors!
First, from the late 70s to mid 80s, many murres died in gill nets from a nearby fishery.
Second, in early 1986, an oil barge owned by the Apex Houston Company accidently spilled
26,000 gallons of oil while traveling from San Francisco to Long Beach Harbour.
This massive oil spill killed 9,900 birds in total, 6,300 of which were murres.
After the oil spill, the Apex Houston Company had to pay 6.4 million dollars because
of a settlement in a federal and state lawsuit.
4.9 million dollars of that sellement, a little over 75%, went to restoring the murre population,
or, more specifically, it went to a council made up of the USFWS, the NOAA, and the CDFG.
I thought saying just their acronyms would be faster and cleaner, but I’m now realizing
that that’s probably not the case.
So, I’ve gotta challenge for you.
Let’s say you work at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and you are given 4.9 million
dollars to restore the murre population: What do you do?
Maybe you raise a colony in a zoo and then slowly reintroduce them to the wild?
Maybe you try your best to preserve the land and make it as suitable to murres as possible?
Well, the USFWS did none that.
They instead invested in murre decoys, CD players, and mirrors.
They knew that murres were social animals, and that there were still plenty of murres
in existence, they just weren’t living at Devil’s Slide Rock.
If the scientists could provide social cues to signal to rest of the murres that Devil’s
Slide Rock is hoping, that it’s the place to be, they predicted they could repopulate
the area.
This concept is known as social attraction.
Biology and psychology combined.
So they scatter hundreds of decoy murres all around Devil’s Slide Rock, featuring...
Standing murres!
Incubating murres!
Murre eggs!
And Murre chicks!
I couldn’t find pictures of the last two, so I drew them *cracks up*
That's a spicy meat-a-ball.
As I said, they also implemented 3-sided mirrors, which also created the illusion that there
were more murres on the rock, but they also had the advantage of being able to capture
motion.
If a real murre is on the rock and walking around, the mirrors will reflect that, making
them seem ever more realistic than decoys.
Finally, the USFWS added 4 speakers across the rock to simulate what an active murre
colony would sound like.
The recording they played was of Farallon National Wildlife Refuge in May 1995, and
contained the sounds of thousands of murres.
Boobadaboo!
Boobadabee!
These are the layouts of where they placed the thingies!
The goal out of all the social attraction equipment wasn’t just to get murres back
on Devil’s Slide Rock, but it was also to get murres mating.
It basically went down like this:
>> MURRE 1: Ayy whatup I see that tons of Murres are over here!
>> MURRE 2: Nah they’re just mirrors and decoys, it’s just a prank bro.
>> 1: Ahh you got me.
Ha ha.
>> 2: Ha ha
>> 1: Ahh ahh oooh.
>> 2: Ha ha let’s make some babies.
So the big question now is: did they work?
The answer: OOOH YES, they worked so much better than expected.
The social attraction equipment was placed on the rock in January 1996, and it took just
one day for a murre to come back.
Yes, it was just 1 murre, but remember, the rock had been barren for many many moons before
the social attraction equipment, so 1 bird was a big deal.
The next day, 4 murres were reported, and it kept growing and growing.
Here’s a graph of the Number of Murres vs The Date in 1996 (mostly), and, uhh, can you
guess when they implemented the social attraction equipment?
Yea, riiiiiight there.
Quick side note right here, this sharp drop off at the end is a result of it being the
end of murre attendance for the season, so this wasn’t the murres abondanding Devil’s
Slide Rock again, it was more than expected.
The social attraction equipment worked so well that, in just 5 years, the USFWD reached
their 10 year goal of a hundred breeding pairs.
They removed the social attraction equipment in 2004 because the colony became self-stuantaning,
and, up to this day, Devil’s Slide Rock’s common murre population is back to where it
was before the local extinction.
*awkward pointing* So, do you wanna utilize social attraction to restore a colony of murres
near you?
Yes?
Why?
*look off screen when talking to Musk* But seriously, let’s just pretend Elon Musk
comes up to you on the street and he’s like, “Yo, Alex,” uhh, how does he know my name?
“Yo, Alex, now that I’m done building flamethrowers, I’ve suddenly become very
passionate about restoring seabird populations.
Can you help?”
And I can say, “Elon ol’ boy, what an oddly specific request, but yes, I can,”
and after this bit, you can too.
*awkward smile pause* Here’s 6 things researchers learned are important to have when implementing
social attraction after studying it at Devil’s Slide.
I should probably think of a shorter title.
One!
The sooner you start social attraction after a local extinction, the better.
You want to attract as many birds who were also members of the former colony as possible.
Two!
The best time to install social attraction equipment is before the breeding season.
Make sure your birdies have enough time to come to the site and pick a partner before
it’s time to mate.
In this case, January was picked because it’s right after November and December, when the
murres come back to central California, while still leaving plenty of time, like several
months, before mating season.
Three!
Give your birds choices; as in, make sure you have areas of low-decoy-density and high-decoy-density
so the birds can pick which they like best.
Don’t just put tons of decoys everywhere or make them all far apart equally, you wanna
mix it up.
Four!
Even in high-decoy density groups, make sure you leave space for the birds, to, well, actually
come and live.
If you’re rock is just filled with decoys and you leave no space for the actual birds,
well, congrats you got a rock full of decoys my friend.
Five!
Mirrors are helpful!
I mean, the section of the study actually says, “Provide mirrors in open spaces among
decoys to enhance apparent numbers and movements of birds,” but all I get from that is Mirrors
are helpful!
Six!
Look at the density of where the birds used to nest, and try to match that with the decoys.
The logic here is that previously dense spots on the rock should be dense with decoys to
let birds and chicks who previously lived there know that they should return to those
areas that, in the past, were quality.
As a note to end on, here’s a couple of the concluding sentences in the study documenting
this whole thing: “While social attraction equipment and monitoring efforts can be costly
in certain circumstances, this project has demonstrated its efficacy for seabird restoration
purposes....
Natural recolonization at Devil’s Slide Rock probably would not have occurred for
decades or centuries, if at all, without effective use of social attraction techniques.”
I know that murres aren’t the most click-baity of topics, but I found it interesting, so,
if you did too, it would mean a lot if you subscribe, hit that like button, and shared
this video.
You can follow me on Twitter, Insta, and Snapchat, @alexunickel, thanks for watching, DFTBA,
and explore on.
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New year!
It’s 2018, and I’m psyched to be making videos again.
Technicality fans might notice something a bit different on my head, or, not on my head.
That’s right, I’ll talk about the hat more in an upcoming Q with A video.
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See y’all next time.