Farallon Islands--Rich in Wildlife, Beset by Threats : Environment: Refuge off coast of San Francisco is treasure-trove for biologists. Exploitation and encroachment have harmed many species.

Like keepers of some hidden treasure, a small group of biologists on a rugged island outpost stands guard against the forces of one of the nation’s largest urban centers to preserve the biggest colony of sea birds in the continental United States.

Thirty miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, 250,000 sea birds nest on rocks that jut up from the Pacific Ocean and form the Farallon Islands chain. Two-ton elephant seals and steller sea lions--an endangered species--growl, bark and loll about the beach in a tiny cove protected from crashing waves.

Gray whales, porpoises and a dozen other species of cetaceans regularly swim past. Biologists have documented more attacks on seals by great white sharks in the surf off Southeast Farallon Island, the largest island in the chain, than anywhere in the world.

Welcome to the Farallon Islands, 211 acres of rocky islets that are home to 28% of California’s sea birds. A sort of scientific monastery, biologists work full time on the islands and have produced dozens of research papers over the years.

The islands’ wildlife--fed by unusual ocean currents that are especially rich in nutrients--is protected by strict federal regulations and threatened by everything from natural fluctuations in water temperature to the nation’s largest underseas radioactive waste dump.

“This is about as charged as you can get. It’s ecologically charged. It’s economically charged,” said Laurie Wayburn, director of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, a research and environmentalist organization that oversees and studies the islands for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

It is all in harm’s way of the one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Oil spills large and small have killed thousands of Farallon birds and endangered one of California’s richest fisheries.

Steller sea lions numbered 700 on the islands a few decades ago. Now, 50 breeding pairs remain--though for some reason they are not reproducing. Suspected causes of the decline are pollution and overfishing of their favored food.

The island population of murres was 100,000 in 1982. In the 1980s there was increased use of small-mesh gill nets, and many of the deep-diving sea birds became ensnared and drowned. New state restrictions on gill netting reduced bird deaths. But the murres population of about 40,000 has not rebounded.

Complicating it all is the radioactive dump. For three decades, the military and private contractors cast overboard 47,500 drums of radioactive waste and heavy metals in the Gulf of the Farallones. The 55-gallon drums are in three sites at depths from a few hundred feet to more than 5,000 feet. The waste is thought to be low-level, but much is not known about the dumping that ended in 1972.

The Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have embarked on a $900,000 study to analyze the threat and determine whether the dump should be declared a Superfund site and cleaned up.

“The islands are an early warning system on the health of the Pacific and the Bay,” said refuge manager Rick Coleman of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the island preserve.

If there is an oil spill, he said, the effect will be seen on the Farallones. If global warming occurs, the effect will be evident because wildlife used to colder water will die.

Fish and Wildlife bars access to all islands except Southeast Farallon. No one is supposed to set foot onto Southeast Farallon without a Fish and Wildlife permit. The few permits that are issued go to people with official escorts.

Only a half-dozen Point Reyes Bird Observatory biologists and an occasional visiting scientist may stay overnight. The Fish and Wildlife Service pays the observatory $59,000 a year to watch over the island.

Coleman noted that the islands “seem pretty wild” compared to the nearby San Francisco Bay Area. The islands support a few hundred seals and sea lions. But before hunters stalked them for their fur, meat and blubber a century ago, thousands were there.

Before the Gold Rush, there were perhaps 1 million birds on the islands. But entrepreneurs struck it rich by sailing to the islands, collecting murre eggs and bringing them back to feed gold miners. The murre population, once 400,000, fell to a few thousand by the turn of the century.

A lighthouse was placed on Southeast Farallon Island in the mid-1800s and 100 people lived there, pushing birds into the steep reaches of the island. In 1909, most of the islands were made a federal wildlife refuge. Southeast Farallon Island was added to the refuge in 1969, the year the Point Reyes Bird Observatory began its monitoring. Lighthouse keepers left in 1972 when the lighthouse was automated.

Today’s human inhabitants--a half-dozen bird observatory biologists, interns and volunteers--live on the island in shifts of two to six weeks. At night, they sleep in one of two century-old houses that remain. By day, they fan out and conduct their studies.

Little about the animals goes unnoticed. From a blind above a cove favored by sea lions, biologists document the number of times male elephant seals copulate in a particular season, and what the results are.

Biologists have watched great white sharks attack and consume scores of seals and sea lions. In each of the past four years, they have counted 50 to 60 attacks. In 1985, a biologist’s raft was struck by a shark and destroyed.

Bird observatory biologist Bill Sydeman sat in a cramped wooden blind perched atop a steep and windy cliff overlooking a shore blanketed by cormorants and other birds.

In shifts of two or three hours, Sydeman explained, biologists home in on birds hundreds of feet away, looking for details like whether they have been banded. To see the bands, they wait patiently for the bird to stand. Birds sit for hours, particularly if it is stormy. Then, once their quarry does stand, biologists note the number of eggs and how many of them hatch.

To an outsider, the work in the blinds may seem tedious. But Sydeman says “there’s tons of stuff to do.” Tape decks are frowned upon. “I hate Walkmans,” he said.

Western gulls are the most numerous species on the island, at about 25,000. At the height of hatching season last month, Sydeman walked on a narrow path, past screeching gulls. They are part old friend, part specimen, part irritant. Some take flight, leaving their eggs to dive at intruders. Biologists’ ponchos are spotted with guano. None dare venture outside without a hat.

A gull they call Troll is known for attacking people. One they call Spike is known for eating the eggs and chicks of auklets, a burrowing species of sea bird that nests under the hard ground. To protect auklets, biologists have fashioned small boxes, which allow them to come and go but keep gulls out.

But while they prey on other birds, gulls also hold a fascination. Sydeman points to gulls that have been coming to the same spot to nest for more than a decade. Some have come back to the same spot for 20 years, documented each year by the researchers.

“It is a great place,” said Peter Pyle, 33, another biologist who spends six months of the year on the island and has been working here since 1980. “It has some sort of magic to it.”

His days begin before dawn and end at 10 p.m. There is no telephone. To talk with the mainland, researchers use a radio. Boats come once every two weeks with mail and supplies, and ferry back biologists whose tours have ended.

There is a television in an otherwise vacant house. When it is on, the set is tuned to a sports event or detective show. Given that their days could come from the pages of National Geographic, Pyle said, “I’d never go there to watch a nature program.”

Pyle has taken an interest in the latest human impact. In 1988, fishermen began harvesting valuable sea urchin and abalone from tidal waters around the islands.

Peter Kalvass, a state Fish and Game biologist in Ft. Bragg who tracks the urchin fishery, estimated that as many as 2 million pounds have been taken from the Farallones since 1988.

The spiny red creatures are California’s most valuable fishery, putting $25 million into fishermen’s pockets in 1990, more than double the value of the salmon fishery. Nearly all of the 45 million pounds of urchin that will be taken from California waters this year will be shipped to Japan, where the edible sex organs are a favored type of sushi.

Pyle found that boat engines and the urchin divers’ air compressors frightened murres. When murres take flight, gulls swoop in to eat their eggs. The noise also frightens seals and sea lions, causing stampedes. When stampedes occur, pups can be crushed.

Fish and Wildlife officials began trying to limit access to fishermen three years ago, hoping to bar boats from coming within 1,000 feet of the islands. But the effort has been complicated by overlapping jurisdiction.

Water around the islands is controlled by the state Fish and Game Commission. Under state law, the commission must heed fishermen’s concerns. So far, the state has rejected much of the federal government’s proposal.

The Fish and Game Commission is expected to adopt regulations this summer that will keep boats at least 300 feet from some parts of the islands. Urchin fishermen have agreed to the proposed boundary and have promised to find ways to keep their boat engines and diving compressors quieter.

“I anticipate the fishermen will make a sincere effort,” said John Duffy of the state Department of Fish and Game. “They don’t want to be forced to leave the islands completely.”

Jean Takekawa, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist who has studied the falling murre population, is among those skeptical that the state regulations will suffice. As she sees it, the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge is “an incredible opportunity.”

“The opportunity is for conservation and science--to help restore the biggest breeding colony in the continental United States,” she said. “We’ve had some success. We’re a long way from the end.”

BACKGROUND

The Farallon Islands are within the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, one of eight such sanctuaries in U.S. waters. Although the islands are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the gulf waters, 948 square miles in all, fall under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s jurisdiction. Oil exploration is prohibited in national marine sanctuaries, and ocean dumping is limited. Most other uses can take place. Proposals are pending to create eight additional national marine sanctuaries, including Santa Monica Bay and Monterey Bay.

Island Refuge

The Farallon Islands support an amazing array of wildlife, which is why the federal government wants to limit access even further to the 211-acre Farallon Islands Wildlife Refuge.

Here are the 12 bird species indigenous to the islands and the percentage of those birds in California found on the islands:

Ashy storm-petrel: 98%

Cassin’s auklet: 88%

Western gull: 66%

Brandt’s cormorant: 31%

Rhinoceros auklet: 30%

Tufted puffin: 26%

Common murre: 19%

Pigeon guillemot: 16%

Double-crested cormorant: 15%

Leach’s storm-petrel: 13%

Pelagic cormorant: 7%

Black oyster catcher: 5%