WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Things have gotten much warmer, very
quickly, in the Arctic after a period of

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gradual increases in temperature.  I'm dr.
George Divoky.  I'm director of friends of

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Cooper Island,  a non-profit, and I have been studying black Guillemots, an Arctic sea bird,

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for the past 42 years on an island
off

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northern Alaska where climate change has greatly impacted the birds breeding on the island.

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Every summer I spend three months on the
island.  I lived in a tent for the first

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28 years of the study but then after
Polar bears started coming to the island I

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got a cabin for my safety and live there
now behind it an electric fence and

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inside the cabin. The Bears are there
because of the fact that the ice is

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melting and the sea ice melting is also
taking the food away from the bird I've

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been studying so that the parent birds
are having a harder time trying to find

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food for their nestlings.  Black
Guillemots specialize in Arctic cod, a

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species that lives directly under sea
ice, and as the climate has warmed it has

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retreated further and further offshore
every summer so that Guillemots can no longer

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fly out to the ice.  The fish are no
longer available and they have to turn

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to alternate prey or feed their young
less, and as a result their breeding

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success has declined.  The chart showing
the average annual temperature in Barrow

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gives you an idea of how cold or warm
a given year was and plotting a long

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time series as the chart does now up
until 2016, you can see the trend as to

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what is happening.  And that trend that
was gradual up and so recently it's like

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a major jump in 2016.  So it is that major
change that we can see in having all

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those earlier years, having those records,
is very important because we can put

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2016 into context and the context is
very scary which is why it is a large

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red dot.  One of the shortcomings of
charts is that they typically show

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physical data like temperature where the
red dot is, I lived on my island in the

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Arctic for 3 months in 2016 and saw
major changes, I saw birds breeding

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earlier than they ever had,
I saw chicks not being able to be fed by

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their parents, I saw polar bears swimming
to the island. So that red dot really encompasses

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all that and if you just look at the
chart you don't pick up all those things I saw.

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One of the important things about my
study is that it is the longest such

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study in the Arctic Basin and even
though I'm on one island, anywhere that

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the ice is retreating in the Arctic and
there are many seabird colonies in the

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Arctic,
there are certainly similar changes

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taking place with birds being unable to
find food that up until recently they

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could always find.  So this really is a
site to monitor what is happening to an

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ecosystem and then being able to say
okay this is probably happening

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throughout the whole Arctic Basin.

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What has been important to me about
doing the study is that I've been able

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to go up to the Arctic every year and
follow some of the same individuals that

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are breeding on the island.  I've band the birds
and I've had birds lived for 33 years

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that I've been able to track how many
young they're raising and see their

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young coming back and that sort of
continuity gave me a personal connection

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that I can go back and see birds that I
have color bands on and I can tell who

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they are.  That has really been one of the
main reasons I've been going back.  And

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then as the Arctic started changing and
I saw these same individuals struggling

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it gave me a personal connection with
these individuals that, okay how are you

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gonna deal with the fact that the ice is as  far as it is offshore?

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The graph showing 2016 being as warm as
it was is a major impetus for me to get

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out and tell the story behind 2016.  Even
though it's very depressing, I'm very

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motivated to get out and share my
observations with people because many

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people don't have to experience what I
experienced in summer every year in the

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Arctic and I can go back and say this is
what I saw, this is what I experienced,

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this is what's going on due to climate
change and let me tell you about it

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because it's happening quickly and many
people have come up to me and said I now

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have a story about climate change that I
didn't have before.  This certainly is why

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I keep doing it and also why I can't
stop.

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I think that's the most important thing
that the younger generation can do is

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being very well aware on a daily basis
of what is happening with climate and

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not casually reading climate change
stories and don't let it become normalized

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like 'oh yes this is the warmest year
on record and sure because last year

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was too.'  And as a result talk to your
parents, talk to your teachers, talk to

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your friends.  Have it be part of your
life because it is part of your life

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even though you may not experience it
every day the way that the Guillemots do  on Cooper Island