TRAVERSE CITY -- Dead birds on Lake Michigan shorelines indicate a serious problem in the water, and both researchers and northern Michigan residents are taking an interest.
"There were birds dying left and right and we were getting flooded with phone calls," said Kevin Cronk, monitoring and research coordinator for the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council.
Experts say as many as 8,000 to 10,000 native and migrating birds perished last year in northern Lake Michigan, caught in Type E botulism plumes likely spawned by changes to the ecosystem from invasive species.
Beach walkers found rotting bird carcasses from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Benzie County to Wilderness State Park in Emmet County; dead birds even reached Upper Peninsula shorelines for a total of more than 400 miles.
Eighteen species of birds died from botulism outbreaks, including common loons, gulls, endangered piping plovers and one bald eagle. Up to three times as many birds died last year than in 2006, when the die-off was limited to about a dozen miles at the national park.
Concerns about the trend prompted researchers to plan a session Wednesday in Roscommon to discuss the problem and prepare for the next expected outbreaks this summer and fall. Officials will share information from last year and adopt uniform monitoring guidelines, said Mark Breederland, from Michigan Sea Grant in Traverse City, who helped organize the agency meeting.
The public can learn more at future informational sessions in affected lakeshore communities, the first at 7 p.m. Feb 12 at the Inland Seas Education Center in Suttons Bay. Affiliated agencies likely will recruit volunteers to walk the beaches to both count and collect dead birds, officials said.
"We see dead birds on the beach and it's an indication of other things happening in the lake," said Ken Hyde, wildlife biologist at Sleeping Bear.
The phenomenon likely results from several invasive species, officials said, including zebra and quagga mussels, as well as round gobies, a small fish.
Mussels filter the water, allowing more light to shine through and grow more algae. That eventually creates conditions along the shoreline conducive for outbreaks of botulism toxins, Hyde said.
An abundance of the naturally occurring toxins are absorbed by mussels, which are in turn eaten by fish. When birds eat infected fish and die, they become part of the disrupted food chain, Hyde said.
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