Cleaned-Up Pelicans to Be Tracked : Spill: Twenty of the big birds will be fitted with tiny transmitters, released and studied for any adverse effects of being coated with oil.

Twenty brown pelicans that were coated with oil in last month’s spill off Huntington Beach will be outfitted with tiny radio transmitters todayin a federally funded study of how exposure to crude oil affects behavior.

Three UC Davis avian specialists, Michael Fry, Daniel Anderson and Frank Gress, are heading the $67,000 research project, which is being underwritten by the federal Minerals Management Service and the California Department of Fish and Game.

“There’s always been a big question about oiled, rehabilitated birds as to whether the stress of having been oiled will interfere with their breeding,” Fry said.

A similar study by Fry on two types of sea birds--casin auklets and wedge-tailed shearwaters--found that birds exposed to oil frequently abandoned their colonies and had lowered success in egg-laying and hatching. That five-year study, also funded by Minerals Management, was published in 1987 and was “the first to document long-term, sub-lethal effects of oil on sea birds,” said Gordon Reetz, a natural resource specialist with the agency’s Los Angeles office.

After the Feb. 7 spill, 141 oil-covered brown pelicans were captured and brought to a special bird rescue center on Terminal Island to be cleaned.

Of those, 64 have been released, 23 died, two had to be euthanized, nine were transferred to other facilities and 43 are awaiting release, said Jay Holcomb, director of the International Bird Rescue Center.

Today, Holcomb said, the UC Davis biologists will be fitting miniature radio transmitters “about the size of a lipstick case” on the backs, just between the wings, of 20 adult pelicans “in breeding plumage.”

The birds are to be released Friday or Saturday and then followed for several months to see if exposure to oil has any effect on mating, egg incubation, hatching success of the eggs, chick-rearing and the ability of the chicks to fly.

The radio tags are not expected to have any effect on the pelicans and will be shed when the birds molt in July, Reetz said.

In addition, to establish a control group, the researchers will be tagging 20 pelicans that had no exposure to oil and monitoring their behavior closely.

Fry said the study is funded through September. He and the other biologists hope to locate the birds next year by the banding marks on their legs.

Minerals Management Service Director Barry Williamson said the study “should contribute to our understanding of the short- and long-term effects of exposure to oil on sensitive species in the marine environment.” His agency is contributing $50,000 to the study and Fish and Game is spending $17,000.