Opinion: a modest proposal-seabirds are marine creatures first, land-based marine predators second

Evidence indicates that members of the marine bird research and management communities should view seabirds from the seabirds' perspective, as marine organisms, rather than the pervading view derived from human's interaction with the sea, i.e., as temporary visitors centered on home ports. By doing so, research results and management plans will be more realistic and effective. Seabirds themselves only temporarily visit land in their reproductive attempts, with most of their time otherwise spent at sea, as much as 90% in the lifetimes of some species. This is especially true among seabirds of the more productive stretches of water, such as eastern boundary currents, which as a rule have relatively few islands on which to nest as well as these waters typically being dominated by seasonal, non-breeding species. A case in point is the Pigeon Guillemot Cepphus columba of the California Current, a species/population that dwells in waters of the Pacific Northwest for most of the year, except for a quick migration south, then back north, for nesting. It ventures south to then have to compete with far more abundant species. The point is that protecting just seabird nesting islands, but ignoring marine issues within the whole of respective annual ranges, is often not a successful strategy, as exemplified to the extreme by the trend toward extinction of African Penguin Spheniscus demersus of the Benguela Current, where seabird species visitors are far more abundant.