Ecology 1844: The Great Auk

Just as cruises unfold uniquely but have common elements, each generation comes of age believing themselves to be the first to have discovered great truths of the universe.

That's how my generation felt around the time of the first Earth Day, when the Age of Aquarius was dawning according to song, though I don't know if stars were actually aligning.

College students like me eagerly signed up for Ecology classes, which I believe now would be called Environmental Studies, hoping to save the world, and WE SUCCEEDED!

We forced McDonald's to serve their Big Macs and Egg McMuffins wrapped in paper instead of more insulated styrofoam boxes, accepting slightly less piping hot fast food as our personal sacrifice.

We cut our hair and stopped using hairspray, though manufacturers had acted quickly to remove chlorofluorocarbons, the real culprit in ozone layer depletion found in older aerosol cans, once they knew of the potential danger, before government restrictions were enacted.

Marine biologist Mark Harris, the naturalist on our Star Princess cruise, revealed that the big ozone hole feared to melt Antarctica had unexpectedly shrunk to a third its size and split into two holes, one of which must be directly above Ecuador, he surmised, because his head got badly burned while he was tagging turtles for a National Geographic research project (when he also realized his hair must be thinning on top).

I looked it up this morning, and apparently what seemed like breaking news to me actually happened in 2002, but that reversal didn't receive nearly the press as the Ozone Hole did when it was growing.

A NASA article from November of 2017 said warm air (global warming?) had been responsible for making the ozone hole smaller today than it had been in 1988, which I'd call the earth's atmosphere self-correcting.



Regardless, to this day, many of us recycle religiously, turn off lights in rooms not in use, wear sweatshirts inside rather than turning up the thermostat, walk instead of drive whenever possible, and really try to have small carbon footprints in daily life.

By the early 1970's, less optimistic songs had predicted the earth had "ten years, maybe then no more."

2017 Spring Skiing in Montana rather than Diamond Head in Hawaii

But as I said, we succeeded in saving our world for future generations.  

A new ice age had been predicted at the time of the first Earth Day, with shorter growing seasons projected to cause mass starvation in the USA by the 1990's.

My generation was so successful at stopping global cooling that, according to Al Gore, we caused global warming.

Okay, he didn't exactly say that, and Gore's disciples now say "climate change" rather than global warming, but statistically I would postulate as much of a clear correlation in chart movement between recycling and global warming as between "greenhouse gases," including the latest villain CO2, and negative climate events.

My late friend Bill Bundy, an aerospace engineer, told me that Planck's Constant settled the issue of CO2 and UV absorption long ago, but not in the way many believe.  That formula maxed out at considerably lower levels of CO2 than we have today in the 1950's, which he concluded meant alarmists were ignoring scientific fact.

Regardless, as naturalist Mark Harris pointed out, CO2 levels have definitely increased beyond historical norms, causing alarm among many scientists, and I'm certainly in favor of continuing to save our planet from potential risks.

I'm just not sure demagogues would do a better job than God at controlling our complex atmosphere.

Mark Harris spoke about cataclysmic climate events in the past which wiped out species and completely changed the future, but interestingly they seem to have been caused primarily when huge asteroids hurtling through space smashed into our planet and literally changed life on earth overnight.

What could we possibly do to stop that from happening again?

In any case, we can make a difference in our own lives, in the areas within our personal control.

Haney Family in Redondo Beach in January, 2018

When in Hawaii or some other natural paradise, we can allow creatures great and small to live in peace.

Don't grab a friendly green turtle who welcomes you to his home. As Mark Harris gently noted, "That won't be the favorite part of that turtle's day."

Don't tear off pieces of coral, and don't take home starfish or even lava rock as souvenirs.

Don't kill a reptile that looks scary but means you no harm.

Consider the Great Auk, which even cave-dwelling peoples in North America and Europe used as a food source.

Unlike many humans today, these little penguins mated for life, and males and females split time sitting on their eggs.  Mama and Papa also shared the responsibility of feeding the newborn, and adult Great Auks were seen floating with their fledglings sitting on their backs.  If a polar bear ate one adult, that obviously made a pretty large impact, though nothing compared to what humans would do.

In addition to eating Great Auks, native Americans used their beaks and feathers in clothing and in ceremonies, though still not pushing them close to extinction.

Great Auks had very specific habitat needs which limited their population, requiring a rocky island with a sloping shoreline on the Atlantic Ocean, where fish were plentiful but at the same time difficult for polar bears to reach.

Auk art here and above by John Gerrard Keulman

They were very social and lived in colonies.

When European explorers traveled to the New World, the Great Auk was the Age of Discovery equivalent of fast food.

These black and white flightless birds that looked a lot like penguins found in the Southern Hemisphere were graceful in water but rather clumsy on land, making them easy prey for sure-footed humans.

With their friendly, curious nature, these 2 1/2 feet-tall animals that fully grown weighed only 11 pounds would waddle up slowly to meet the human explorers, who would simply approach slowly as if they were friendly too.

Once the good-natured Pinguinus impennis came close enough, homo sapiens would bash them over the head with clubs, to be cooked and eaten right then or carried away as provisions for later.

Auk feathers became a growth industry, when it was discoverded they made pillows almost as good as eider down, accelerating the demise of the "original penguin."

If that weren't enough, Great Auk eggs became a fashionable home decor accessory, so egg hunters gathered eggs without regard to the effect on the species in order to have an attractive artifact on the fireplace mantel of fine homes.

In the early 1840's, sailors captured a Great Auk on a deserted Scottish isle, tied it up and brought it with them, possibly figuring the increasingly rare little penguin could bring a good price, but when they encountered a huge storm, they superstitiously stoned it to death, calling it a witch, in hopes of calming the storm.

That was the last Great Auk found in the British Isles, where the original penguins had been quite well-known.

It is widely believed that the last pair of Great Auks to exist were strangled at Geirfuglasker ("Great Auk Rock"), Iceland, on July 3, 1842, while they were incubating an egg.  Their last egg was stomped with a boot, crushing this lovable species out of existence.  By then, natural museums were paying as much as $16 for a specimen to stuff and exhibit.

It's not comforting to note that the Great Auk had been a beneficiary of early environmental protection, beginning in 1553.  In 1775, St. John's made hunting them for feathers or eggs punishable by flogging, and in 1794, Great Britain banned killing Great Auks for feathers.

Mark Harris brought up the Great Auk several times, stating that if anyone wants to fund an expedition to find some hidden Great Auk colony, then he was your man.

Having heard this, I decided to see if daughter Amy's magazine Popular Science had done an article on this sad tale of extinction.  I found that indeed there was an article about the Great Auk, but surprisingly it covered possibly resurrecting the species from its DNA.  (By the way, Amy narrated the PopSci video embedded above.)



I asked Mark what he, as someone who has lived his life preserving nature, thought about this possible "de-extinction."

"Humans were the ones who took them out, so why shouldn't we bring them back?"

What do you think?

It's surprising what issues you consider when you take a break from the daily grind.

"Better service leads to better trips!"



P.S. If you took time to watch all these videos as well as reading this post in its entirety, you definitely deserve a gold star!  If you did the extra credit work of clicking on all of the hotlinks to learn  more, Go to the Head of the Class!  If you understand Planck's Constant's impact on catastrophic global warming theory, please explain it to me.