FEEDING FRENZY Northern Gannets plunge into the ocean in search of fish, a common sight across New York Harbor and the New York Bight during winter and spring. © Peter Geithner
After days of monitoring the forecast hour by hour, it’s finally time. “It’s fish weather,” Nature Conservancy seabird scientist Juliet Lamb says as the research boat slips from the dock, “calm enough to work and clear enough to see birds.”
As the sun rises over New York Harbor, the city wakes up. Ferries begin their runs. Container ships edge toward port. Between them, northern gannets drop like thrown spears into the water. Their snow-white bodies and gold-washed heads vanish beneath the water’s surface before reappearing with flashes of silver in their bills, their blue eyes gleaming.
This spectacle happens here every winter and spring, with gannet numbers sometimes reaching into the tens of thousands. The harbor and nearby New York Bight (the stretch of ocean extending from Long Island to New Jersey) are known as a working waterfront for people, but together they also form one of the Atlantic Coast’s most important wildlife crossroads for gannets, shearwaters, whales and an array of other species.
Where seabirds cross paths and seasons
Described as “sharp in every respect" in Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds, northern gannets are powerful seabirds built for the open ocean. They gather in the harbor and across the bight to feed and rest before flying north to breeding sites in Quebec and along the coast of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
They don’t just pass through New York Harbor. They settle in.
As spring gives way to summer, the cast of travelers changes. Gannets depart, and great shearwaters take their place, arriving in the same fish-filled waters to refuel before crossing oceans again.
Great shearwaters are ocean wanderers who sweep in from four remote islands in the South Atlantic—Gough, Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, and Kidney Island in the Falkland Islands—completing one of the longest migrations of any seabird on the planet. They fly low on wings that seem to “shear” the surface, except when they are arcing and wheeling into stronger winds.
Unlike gannets, which plunge-dive near shore, shearwaters typically stay farther offshore and forage close to the water’s surface. They rely on predators such as whales and tuna to drive fish upward and, being smaller, target a narrower range of prey. So, while gannets and shearwaters overlap in terms of place and prey, they experience—and use—New York Harbor in fundamentally different ways.
This seasonal exchange marks New York as something rare: a place where migration routes from opposite hemispheres rely on the same stretch of ocean for different purposes over the course of the year. For researchers, this makes deepening our understanding of New York City's ocean backyard an urgent responsibility.
“Looking at how different species use the same habitat—where they overlap and where they diverge—helps us design conservation that works for entire seabird communities,” Lamb says. “It also helps us pinpoint the most sensitive places and times for individual species.”
Inside New York’s offshore commutes: studying the paths birds take through a working ocean
To study how seabirds are using this stretch of the Atlantic, researchers must first catch them at sea—work that requires patience and precision. Gannets, for instance, rarely linger near boats during daylight hours; when they do, everything must happen at once.
Once a bird is in the boat, it becomes a two-person job: one set of hands to steady the bird, one to untangle wings and feet—both careful to avoid the gannet’s serrated bill.
To keep the bird calm, the team places it briefly in a pillowcase, then moves through a practiced sequence: a quick weigh-in, measurements, a blood draw when conditions allow, and a lightweight GPS transmitter, powered by a small solar panel, secured to the gannet’s tail feathers.
“You admire them, record the information you need,” Lamb says. “And then you let them go.”
Often, a bird will sit on the edge of the boat for a moment—reorienting—then lift back into the wind. The whole process takes about 10 to 15 minutes, and on most days the team tags only two or three birds.
Shearwaters require a different improvisational choreography. Bait hits the water, birds swirl and jostle, and researchers have just seconds to execute a precise hoop net throw as birds dart and feed around the boat. It’s a high-stakes ring toss, requiring patience, coordination and just the right moment.
Data reveal a clearer picture of seabird movement and feeding patterns
After returning from the field, the team acts quickly to organize and process samples. Transmitters begin sending data almost immediately. Map points, statistics and dates gather into lines and patterns, which the data science team uses to analyze how the birds move through the harbor and beyond.
Then the team layers these routes with oceanographic data layers from buoys, satellites and other research teams to understand how seabirds respond to changing habitat conditions. What might look like an open, featureless ocean to humans is anything but. For seabirds, it’s a dynamic landscape shaped by wind, currents, temperature and subtle shifts in ocean color—signals the birds use to track fish across vast distances.
Those patterns are reshaping what scientists understand about birds’ lives at sea. The findings of the team's work, published in the peer-reviewed journal Ornithological Applications, provide rare insight into how these birds are using the New York Bight during the nonbreeding season, offering one of the clearest pictures yet of how they move through an urban ocean.
Tracking data show that many gannets forage close to shore during the day and roost farther offshore at night. Dawn and dusk are critical commuting windows—times when they move through some of the busiest waters on the coast.
Shearwaters adjust their habitat use depending on the behavior of marine predators below the surface. They depend on whales and tuna to push fish toward the surface where they can easily reach them. Their behavior shifts depending on the partner: above whales, they linger and feed in place; above fast-moving tuna, they stay on the move.
These dynamics matter because when whales are present, shearwaters stay. When whales are scarce, they leave. In 2024, abundant whales and forage fish kept shearwaters in the New York Bight all summer; in 2025, with few whales, most moved east to offshore feeding grounds like Georges Bank.
One harbor, many journeys
Lamb knows something about commuting windows, too. Before field days, she watches the forecast days ahead for “fish weather,” then puts her kids to bed and leaves her home in Rhode Island on a late train to Penn Station, transfers onto the Long Island Rail Road around midnight, and grabs a few hours of sleep at TNC’s Uplands Farm Preserve before loading gear and leaving the dock at first light.
In season, her route can include a stop at a deli where locals know her as “the bird tagger,” followed by a narrow window on the water.
By summer, the avian rhythms shift again. Great shearwaters, fresh from transoceanic journeys, trace wide looping paths through the Bight as they feed and prepare for what comes next.
“This is one place,” Lamb says, “but it hosts so many completely different lives and movements, depending on the season.”
Planning with precision for a changing ocean
Learning how animals like seabirds and whales use our ocean neighborhoods is urgent because the ocean is changing. Shipping traffic, warming waters, fishing pressure and new energy infrastructure are reshaping marine space along the Atlantic Coast. Without shining a light on how wildlife already use these waters, planning risks being done in the dark.
What Seabirds Reveal About Ocean Change
Seabirds reveal ocean change. Tracking their movements, feeding and responses helps assess ocean health and guide conservation.
- Fishing can reshape food supplies. Billions of forage fish like herring and menhaden are harvested yearly, affecting seabird food. Science can guide fisheries management that sustains fish and wildlife.
- Rising seas shrink nesting habitat. Low-lying areas used by seabirds can flood.
- Young birds face new risks. Vegetation changes can expose chicks to predators, heat and disease.
- Ocean conditions are shifting. Warming waters, shifting currents and plankton changes can ripple through food webs.
- Migration can fall out of sync. Conditions can change at different rates on breeding and wintering grounds, creating mismatches between bird arrival and food availability.
By studying the movements of gannets, shearwaters and other seabirds now, Lamb and her team are assembling the tools needed to design an ocean future where wildlife thrives, clean energy succeeds and migration routes remain open for generations to come.
The implications extend beyond New York, too. The birds passing through this harbor connect it to coastlines in Canada, the South Atlantic and beyond. Protecting pathways here helps sustain ocean systems across the hemispheres.
The research is also expanding what scientists know about these understudied seabirds near the top of the marine food chain. Over time, data about their movement, diet and physiology can help inform how fisheries are managed and shed light on everything from the impacts of avian flu to how climate change is reshaping ocean ecosystems.
Protecting New York City’s wild side
Some days on the water, other signs of life surface. Lamb has watched a right whale—one of only about 380 left in the world—rise from the waves with the Manhattan skyline behind it.
“Eight million people live alongside this,” she says. “And most of them never see it.”
By making these hidden journeys more visible, science is revealing New York’s role in migrations that span oceans, seasons and generations—and charting a path to protect habitats, rebuild food webs and keep the ocean working for people and wildlife alike.
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