Peter Hodum backed his small red inflatable boat away from the dock at the Point Defiance Marina near Tacoma and puttered out into Commencement Bay. It was a bright morning in July, and a state ferry nearby was filling up with cars and pedestrians headed to Vashon Island, as befitted this busy corner of southern Puget Sound. 

“Morning commute,” said Hodum, a biology professor at the University of Puget Sound. “Should be a bit quieter where we’re going.” He cut across the ferry’s stern (or bow) and we motored off towards Gig Harbor. A few minutes later we slowed to a putter near the squat white lighthouse that marks the harbor’s entrance. It was then, in the relative quiet, that we heard a high call: Keeeeeeer! Keeeeeeer!

“That’s a MAMU,” Hodum said, using the shorthand for his study subject today: the MArbled MUrrelet.

“There it is,” said Ashley Garman, Hodum’s student, pointing off our starboard. “And there’s another!” 

Against the sun’s glare we could see the dark silhouettes low on the water. The birds were small, perhaps nine or ten inches long, and their profiles modest. Their plumage was brownish green, since they were breeding. Their heads erect, they seemed to be watching us. Garman was making a note of this when we heard still more calls. 

Keeeeeeer! Keeeeeeer!

Another murrelet was behind the first pair, and then another. Before long we had seen eight or ten of them paddling about and diving in this small area as pleasure boats motored past. It was almost an embarrassing number of marbled murrelets—a threatened species doing a decent impression, for the moment, of maybe being not so threatened all the time. 

Commencement Bay, admittedly, is not the first place one might think to look for marbled murrelets in any sort of abundance, relative or otherwise. The species famously prefers to nest on the high branches of old growth evergreens, of which there are fewer and fewer around Puget Sound, to say nothing of the Pacific Northwest as a whole. Marbled murrelets declined as a consequence and were federally listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1992. 

Although more robust numbers of murrelets persist in British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska, the populations in California, Oregon, and Washington are considerably smaller than they once were. Murrelets in Washington are thought to be in particular trouble. In 2023, scientists with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) estimated the state population to be about 4,400 individuals, down from approximately 7,500 in 2015. Loss of prime nesting habitat is to blame, but prey scarcity and human disturbance also play a role. 

“You almost wonder if they’re ever going to catch a break,” Hodum said. 

This is because protecting a murrelet’s nesting habitat can only do so much. Almost as famous as where the murrelets lay their eggs is each pair’s method of provisioning their single chick. Starting early in the morning, murrelet parents take turns leaving their chick, flying twenty or thirty or forty miles or more to some sizable body of water that has small schooling fishes known as forage fish, their preferred prey. There they hunt before making the long return flight to bring the meal back to their waiting chick.             

The bodies of water where Washington’s murrelets are generally thought to spend their days are the Pacific Ocean, or the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But Hodum knows these more southern parts of Puget Sound well. He lives with his family in Tacoma and is an experienced kayaker, frequently paddling around Puget Sound and its bays and inlets. During some of his summer paddles, he started to note how often he saw marbled murrelets in the same areas of southern Puget Sound, like Gig Harbor, or, across the way, Browns Point. Presumably they were drawn to these place by available prey. 

Hodum talked with the WDFW biologists who do boat-based murrelet surveys in the summers and learned that the effort down in this part of Puget Sound was, as he said, “very light.” This would make a great project, he thought. In addition to finding out if Commencement Bay and environs were overlooked murrelet hotspots, he could also introduce students to the particular joys of seabird ecology—in this case, being stationed for hours at a time on bluffs throughout south Puget Sound with binoculars and a spotting scope, a laser rangefinder, a compass, and a notepad. It would also be an opportunity to get some valuable prey data. 

Garman had been Hodum’s student spotter this summer, started surveying in mid-May, and has been coming out almost every day since June, from eight in the morning until noon. With her tools she had been counting whatever murrelets she saw and mapping their locations with the rangefinder. Most days she might see two or three, but sometimes there are five or eight, and just last week she saw the season’s first juvenile murrelet. “That was super exciting,” she said. 

Now, on this day, she and Hodum were going to do a prey survey of the waters around Gig Harbor and Browns Point, across the sound. This would be one of ten such surveys, spread out over the murrelets’ breeding season, which would conclude in August. Hodum turned on his fish finder and began to run straight slow lines back and forth along a pre-determined course. Garman held the console and examined the fish finder’s output. The water was about twenty feet deep and 13°C. Some streaks appeared in the mid column, maybe around fifteen feet or so below us. “Those are probably fish,” Hodum said. “That could be what they’re after.” Later analysis would let him know with greater certainty. 

Around us, the murrelets continued to call out and dive. At one point a recreational boater flew past. “I’ve been thinking we should so some outreach here,” Hodum said as we bobbed in their wake. “Get people to slow down when murrelets are around, like they do with whales. I just have to think of a good slogan.”

“Move Over For Murrelets?” Garman suggested. “Moderate for MAMUs?”

“That’s a start,” Hodum allowed. 

After completing the survey near Gig Harbor, Hodum pointed his boat to Browns Point, across the water. By the time we got there it was closer to noon, and the day had warmed considerably. Even though we had gone just five miles or so, the quality of the water was clearly different: browner, more sediment-filled, and warmer, about 18°C. “We’re in the Puyallup River Plume,” Hodum said. 

Browns Point is normally a good spot for murrelets; one of Hodum’s earlier students had noted them consistently here during a years-long study. But on that day our timing must have been off, or the tide wasn’t quite right, because there were no murrelets to be seen. Also no fish on the fish finder, at least that we could tell superficially. A harbor porpoise surfaced a hundred yards or so away, but that was about it as far as charismatic marine life went, endangered or threatened or no. 

As we motored back to Point Defiance, we could see Mount Rainier rising above the hills of Point Ruston and Commencement Bay in the southeast. “We’re not sure where the murrelets are breeding, or even if they are, necessarily,” Hodum said. “The fact that they’re in pairs is certainly suggestive, though.” Also suggestive: one of his former students was an intern at Mount Rainier National Park. Biologists had put out autonomous recording units, or ARUs, in some of the park’s more thickly forested areas to listen for spotted owls. But they also heard flight calls of marbled murrelets. Which would suggest they were nesting nearby, in some corner of the park. Peter was supposed to talk to someone within the next few days about it. 

So the slow sketching of the marbled murrelet’s life and times in Puget Sound would continue. “There’s so much we don’t know about how murrelets might use these interior waters,” Hodum said. “It’s exciting to get a chance to learn.”