Seabirds are a vital part of the ocean ecosystem, connecting land, air, and sea. From the soaring albatross to the iconic emperor penguin, these birds have adapted to some of the harshest environments on Earth. They play key roles in marine food webs and help scientists monitor the health of ocean ecosystems.
Researchers study sea birds to better understand how ocean conditions affect their survival, behavior, and reproduction. Seabirds are sensitive to changes in climate, food availability, and habitat loss, making them essential indicators of broader environmental change.
Did you know?
Emperor Penguins
The emperor penguin is the largest living penguin species standing around 115 centimeters tall. Once they have found a partner, they work together to keep their young fed and safe.
Much of the recent focus has been on emperor penguins, the largest living penguin species. These birds depend on stable sea ice to raise their chicks, but warming temperatures and melting ice are threatening their future. Scientists are utilizing everything from drones to satellite imagery and even specialized robots to monitor colonies and track how populations evolve.
Studies also explore how seabirds respond to extreme weather, such as tropical cyclones, and how their behaviors—from feeding to nesting—are influenced by shifting ocean patterns. Some research has even examined the surprising effects of personality traits, such as boldness, on mate selection and survival.
As climate change accelerates, sea birds face growing risks—but they also offer critical insight into what’s happening across Earth’s ocean systems.
Video
A scientist reacts to albatross on a remote island
A black-browed albatross soars on high winds over its breeding colony on New Island, Falkland Islands.
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Ocean Encounters: Seabirds
Seabirds thrive far from shore, soaring thousands of miles over open ocean—but their oceanic lifestyle also makes them vulnerable to growing environmental threats.
Video
Why are emperor penguins an indicator of climate change?
Here's why the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is proposing to list emperor penguins as a threatened species.
Video
The Paris Agreement objectives will likely halt future declines of Emperor Penguins
Learn why emperor penguins are indicator species, and what we can learn from their population trends.
Video
A seabird symposium: emperor penguins
WHOI seabird biologist Stephanie Jenouvrier gives a virtual symposium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Video
Oases in Sea Ice Are Essential to Life in Antarctica
Researchers study Antarctic polynyas—ocean oases of life—to uncover how physical and biological processes shape and respond to environmental change.
Video
March of the Penguins
Emperor penguins may vanish by 2100 as climate change melts the sea ice they need to breed, feed, and raise their young, a WHOI study warns.
References
More topics like this
Emperor penguins
The emperor penguin is the largest living penguin species standing around 115 centimeters tall. Once they have found a partner, they work together to keep their young fed and safe.
Benthic life
Benthic animals live on the sea floor and are typically invertebrates, such as sea anemones, sponges, corals, sea stars, sea urchins, worms, mussels, crabs, and more.
Coral stressors
Stressors can affect organisms living on the reef or they can affect the corals, themselves. When corals die, other organisms must relocate or struggle to survive.
Corals
Many people think of coral as hard, rock-like formations that attract abundant, diverse marine life. In fact, corals are tiny marine animals called polyps that live together in colonies.
Coastal ecosystems
The narrow region where land and ocean meet includes salt marshes, mangroves, wetlands, estuaries, reefs, and bays often linked in a network of physical, chemical, and biological interchanges.
Ecosystems
Ocean ecosystems are found in polar regions, coastal waters, coral reefs, hydrothermal vents, the abyssal plain, and at the bottom of the sea.
Environmental DNA (eDNA)
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is essentially DNA collected from the environment. As animals swim through the ocean, they're constantly releasing DNA as they shed skin or scales into the water column.
Phytoplankton
Phytoplankton are primary producers of the ocean—the organisms that form the base of the food chain. WHOI explores the microscopic, single-celled organisms.
Reef ecosystems
A healthy reef protects coastlines from wave damage, plays a critical role in providing food, boosts the economy, and provides materials for pharmaceuticals.
Jellyfish & other zooplankton
These animals live all or part of their life suspended and drifting in fresh or salt water, rarely come in contact with hard surfaces.
Life at vents & seeps
Hydrothermal vents and cold seeps are places where chemical-rich fluids emanate from the seafloor, often providing the energy to sustain lush communities of life in some very harsh environments.
Polar life
By human standards, they are extreme environments. Yet life not only persists in the poles...it thrives.
Reef fish
Fish that inhabit a coral reef play essential roles in the reef ecosystem, and reefs without fish struggle to recover from bleaching or other events that damage the coral.
Seagrass meadows
Seagrass meadows are plants adapted to live a completely submerged life in the salty shallows.
Marine mammals
Marine mammals are warm-blooded vertebrates that bear live young and nourish them with milk as land mammals do, but that spend most or all of their lives in the ocean.
Marine microbes
Microbial life can be found throughout the ocean, from rocks and sediments beneath the seafloor, across the vast stretches of open water, to intertidal and surf zones.
Ocean plants
Ocean plants are critical to marine life—they are an important food source, they provide oxygen to surrounding marine life, and they supply refuge and nursery grounds.
Right whales
The North Atlantic right whale is one of the ocean's most endangered large animals, with only a few hundred left. Slow-moving and often near the surface, these baleen whales are especially vulnerable to ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.
Sharks & other fish
Fish are vital to healthy ecosystems and economies, serving as predators and prey while maintaining balanced food webs and protecting habitats like coral reefs and mangroves.
Shellfish
An aquatic animal, such as a mollusk or crustacean, that has a shell or shell-like exoskeleton.
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