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People from around the world will help monitor the health of a seabird colony that live on an islet west of Lihou.
Two years ago, Agriculture, Countryside and Land Management Services (ACLMS) set up a wildlife camera to capture time-lapse photos of Lihoumel.
These images are now on Seabirdwatch Zooniverse, a citizen science website where the public can view and identify seabirds from around the world, keeping an eye on chicks and eggs and helping understand breeding success, as well as timing and cases of mortality.
Emily Coule, Natural Environment Officer, said: “It’s fantastic to see the images being published as part of this international programme. Using cameras is a clever and cost-effective way of improving our understanding of seabirds while avoiding causing disturbance to wildlife. These photos can help researchers in several areas, and also allows the public to view otherwise unseen parts of our environment.”
The images can be checked at seabirdwatch.org.
The camera was set up for World Wildlife Day in March 2021.
Seabirdwatch is a project led by Oxford University, University College Cork and Oxford Brookes University with research partners from across the North Atlantic, including the UK, Ireland, Svalbard, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
April is global #CitizenScience month & to celebrate we've launched a new workflow!
— Seabird Watch (@seabird_watch) April 8, 2023
Help monitor shag nests on Lihou Island, Guernsey @Govgg. Tag adults, chicks & eggs in images to investigate #seabird breeding timing & success ????
➡️ https://t.co/OCSZAux93t #ornithology #citsci pic.twitter.com/pSE3cmV5zl
Images are collated from these and other locations to better understand seabirds, which provide an indication of the health of the wider marine ecosystem.
Lihou Island and the surrounding area was designated as a Ramsar Site in 2006.
This means it is of international importance. It was designated in part due to the colony of shags that live there.
Guernsey and Herm together support more than 1% of the national population of European shags.
This species is endemic to the northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
They are almost never seen out of sight of land, living off of small fish caught on or near the seabed.
They nest on offshore islands or on cliffs, colonies running from a few to several thousand pairs.
Seabird populations are the most threatened group of birds globally.
While feeding at sea they are vulnerable to increasingly frequent storms, pollution and pressure on their food sources.
In the winter of 2013/14, a sequence of severe storms that hit the Channel Islands and the coats of Cornwall, Brittany and Normandy led to a total of 50,000 seabird deaths across the region.
A population estimate of shags taken in 2015-16 recorded 707 nests being occupied, down from 1,403.
Their nest sites on land can be impacted by invasive predators, habitat destruction and human disturbance.
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