black oystercatcher monitoring project
Contact Amanda at montereyaudubon@gmail.com for any questions about the BLOY Monitoring Project, past data, or outreach events.
tHE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
The Black Oystercatcher (Haematopus bachmani) is a bold and boisterous long-lived shorebird found year-round in Monterey Bay. It ranges along the North American Pacific coast from the Aleutian Islands to Baja California, favoring rocky shorelines. They forage exclusively on intertidal macroinvertebrates (e.g., limpets and mussels) and is thought to be a particularly sensitive indicator of the overall health of the rocky intertidal community. It is one of 11 living oystercatcher species globally and is closely related to the pied oystercatcher of the Gulf Coast, the American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliates), who sometimes makes an appearance on the Pacific Coast and can hybridize with the Black Oystercatcher.
Black Oystercatchers haven’t been well studied but are considered vulnerable to decline owing to a small global population size, low reproductive success and complete dependence on rocky intertidal shorelines that are impacted by human use and rising sea levels. California had generally been considered fringe habitat for the species, but in 2011, California Audubon with the help of local, coastal Audubon chapters like Monterey Audubon, initiated a state-wide survey to measure the distribution and abundance of this species. Their report was published in in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Ornithology in 2014 and is accessible HERE. Their findings indicated that California is in fact a substantial stronghold for the Black Oystercatcher, hosting nearly a quarter of the global population.
Conservation efforts on behalf of Black Oystercatcher are limited by a lack of baseline information. Knowledge gaps exist regarding the locations and sizes of important breeding populations; local and global population status and trends; hatching success, fledging success and dispersal, and overall adult survivorship; regional threats to survival and productivity; the locations of important overwintering areas and the numbers of birds in those areas; as well as the amount of movement between breeding and wintering sites. Our Black Oystercatcher Monitoring Project keeps a close eye on our locally breeding oystercatchers from Point Lobos in the south, north to Pescadero State Beach in San Mateo County. These data will help to contribute to our understanding of this amazing shorebird species and inform policy related to the protection of the rocky intertidal habitat that they depend on.
In 2022 and 2023, Monterey Audubon received a grant from the California Coastal Commission to create a paid internship position in partnership with California State University Monterey Bay to support a student intern participate in field work and help with Black Oystercatcher research. WHALE TAIL® grants support experiential education and stewardship of the California coast and its watersheds.
MAS has received funding from the California Coastal Commission through a Whale Tail grant.
Thanks to long time BLOY Monitor Stephanie Turcotte Edenholm for creating the BLOY SOS videos! You can watch a 4-minute version on our MAS YouTube channel as well.
Snowy Plover Guardian Program
The Monterey Audubon Society works in partnership with California State Parks, the primary land manager for Snowy Plover habitat in Monterey Bay, through the Snowy Plover Guardian Program. This program focuses on education and outreach by trained State Park volunteers to inform the public about the rules and regulations in place at the sandy beach parks where Snowy Plovers nest and roost. The efforts of these volunteers help support Point Blue’s Snowy Plover researchers, State Park’s law enforcement, and the natural resources staff persons who are all trying to maintain the delicate sandy shore habitat and monitor Snowy Plovers.
the 2024 training schedule has been set! Please mark your calendars for the following important dates below.
Please note that both new and returning plover guardians are required to attend or watch the virtual training and attend one in-person training.
Virtual Training - Wednesday, February 28th, 6:00-7:30pm (recorded and posted online HERE)
Download instructions related to the Snowy Plover Guardian Program paperwork HERE
In-Person Training Option #1 - Saturday, March 16th, 2 pm
In-Person Training Option #2 - Friday, March 22nd , 2pm
Mid-Season Bird Walk - Saturday, June 8th
If you are interested in becoming a Snowy Plover Guardian in Monterey Bay, get in touch with us! We can always use more plover lovers on the beach.
Did you get a picture of a Snowy Plover with colored leg bands? Please report your findings HERE.
Defending Monterey Bay’s Snowy Plovers
by blake matheson (c. 2016)
From Monterey Harbor north to Watsonville and beyond, a long crescent of high dunes defines the Monterey Bay’s shore. And no single species better captures both the subtle beauty and fragility of this dune ecosystem than the Western Snowy Plover. “Snowies” can’t nest on the Rocky Shore. They can’t nest in grasslands, or agricultural fields. They require sand, invertebrates to eat, and to be left more-or-less alone from the intrusions of Homo sapiens.
Western Snowy Plover Critical Habitat Unit CA-22 from FWS
While Snowy Plovers were once more widespread in Monterey Bay, today they find the conditions they need to nest and survive from roughly Sand City, north to the mouth of the Pajaro River. Here the dunescape is broad enough, unleashed dogs are few enough, and the foot traffic of beach-goers and surf-casters is light enough, that Snowy Plovers can still forage and breed, most seasons. Significant stretches of the coast are nominally protected as California State Parklands. But a scattering of privately owned footholds in the dunes present a constant risk of development, threatening to extirpate the birds from segments of the shoreline piecemeal.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service first declared the Snowy Plover threatened with extinction in 1973. Pursuant to the Endangered Species Act, that designation has brought the birds a panoply of legal protections. In 2012, after three decades of careful research, and scant improvement in the birds’ prospects, biologists identified and named all the habitat on the West Coast that was critical to the birds survival and recovery. The sandy shore of southern Monterey Bay was singled out as one such segment of crucial breeding territory and catalogued as California Critical Habitat “Zone 22.” Critical Habitat designations are more than just academic inventories. The Endangered Species Act prohibits individuals or entities from killing or harming endangered species, and destroying designated critical habitat. The impressive letter of the Law, however, can sometimes present an unfortunate contrast to its adherence and enforcement.
The sandy dunes and beach of Monterey Bay, from Sand City to the Pajaro River Mouth are a critical breeding ground for Snowy Plovers
Two large, privately held ocean-front parcels within unit-22 fall within the municipal limits of the small commercial-industrial enclave of Sand City, near Seaside. The City and the parcel owners have long sought (and in some cases received) permissions to develop their ocean-front parcels into lucrative hotel-resort complexes. Further north, west of Marina, a decades-old mine extracts hundreds of thousands of tons of sand from the shore of Monterey’s National Marine Sanctuary, every year, causing widespread erosion of Plover habitat. On the southern edge of Zone 22, near Monterey State Beach, crowds of beach-goers and dogs, unleashed in violation of State Park regulations, swarm the beach, making it impossible for Snowy Plovers to find shelter or rest.
Jennifer Pena’s Plover Awareness Sign was one among several dozen installed on the southern shore of Monterey Bay.
Monterey Audubon and its allies in the local conservation community have spent more than three decades endeavoring to prevent further deterioration of the Plovers’ habitat and raise public awareness of the birds’ presence. In the 1990s, Monterey Audubon volunteers were among the first wave of docents on the California coast to monitor snowy nesting success. In 2012, we partnered with State Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Seaside to make and install protective signage around the most heavily trafficked portions of the Plovers’ southern breeding range near Seaside. And, as an out-of-town developer grew closer to gaining the approvals necessary to build a 300 unit resort complex in the middle of plover nesting grounds, Monterey Audubon helped fund efforts to try and deter the project in on legal grounds and document the continuing use of the the site by the birds.
How well Monterey Bay’s Snowy Plovers will fare in coming decades remains to be seen. A rising sea, eroding shore, and a growing human population, hungry for beach access and real estate, present daunting challenges for this inconspicuous, fragile and beautiful species. But, with your support Monterey Audubon will continue to fight to grant the birds as much time and space as can be won.