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Tidewright

Encyclopedia · Group

Seabirds

Above the canopy runs a second, airborne ecosystem. Oystercatchers work the low-tide line, cormorants and gulls read the kelp beds for baitfish, and auks dive from the surface down through the forest’s sunlit water. Seabirds are the kelp forest’s most visible citizens — and often its best indicator, their fortunes rising and falling with the health of the water below.

Browse 14 profilesAll groups

14 profiles

13 scientific names catalogued

Australasian gannet

Morus serrator

The arrow of the southern coast — a plunge-diver that thumps baitfish over the kelp line

7 min read · Seabirds

Common murre

Uria aalge

The flying penguin of northern seas — a wing-powered pursuit diver riding forage-fish schools

10 min read · Seabirds

Harlequin duck

Histrionicus histrionicus

The painted bird of the surf zone — picking snails, crabs and larvae from the kelp edge between the waves

7 min read · Seabirds

Humboldt penguin

Spheniscus humboldti

The upwelling coast’s penguin — a warm-latitude hunter of the kelp-rich Humboldt

8 min read · Seabirds

Kelp gull

Larus dominicanus

The southern hemisphere’s coastal generalist — a flexible hunter-scavenger above every kelp coast it meets

8 min read · Seabirds

Little penguin

Eudyptula minor

The blue fairy of the kelp coast — home-grown, burrow-nesting and working the inshore frontier

7 min read · Seabirds

Rhinoceros auklet

Cerorhinca monocerata

The kelp coast’s burrowing auklet — a purse-seiner of the surface shoals that flies home after dark

7 min read · Seabirds

Black oystercatcher

Haematopus bachmani

The rocky shore’s sentinel — piping over the place where kelp meets beach

8 min read · Seabirds

Black oystercatcher

Haematopus bachmani

The resident sentinel of rich rocky shores, piping alarm at anything that moves

7 min read · Seabirds

A raft of common eiders on calm grey water at the edge of a kelp-fringed northern rocky coast, a black-and-white drake beside a barred brown hen in morning mist.

Common eider

Somateria mollissima

The heavy-bodied sea duck that crushes shellfish whole and gave its name to eiderdown

8 min read · Seabirds

Marbled murrelet

Brachyramphus marmoratus

A seabird with its life split between two vanishing worlds — the kelp sea and the ancient forest

7 min read · Seabirds

Pelagic cormorant

Urile pelagicus

The slim diver of the outer kelp line, picking fish from the reef’s shadowed faces

8 min read · Seabirds

Pigeon guillemot

Cepphus columba

A red-footed diver ferrying single rockfish to its seaside nest

8 min read · Seabirds

Tufted puffin

Fratercula cirrhata

The kelp coast’s most photogenic fisher, feeding chicks from the baitfish schools

8 min read · Seabirds

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Kelp & seaweedsInvertebratesFishesMarine mammals

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Trace every profile through the Coastal Atlas — or learn how the forest they build actually works.

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