Have you ever seen an Albatross? They are an awe-inspiring sight and there are hundreds of them off the Mendocino coast right now. Many of them are coming here to get food for their chicks, which are more than two thousand miles away, on remote islands in the Hawaiian chain. Ecology Hour hosts Bob Spies and Tim Bray get the whole story from Dr. Jonathan Plissner, Supervising Wildlife Biologist at the Midway Island National Wildlife Refuge, where millions of Albatrosses nest.

We hear a lot about the immediate effects of a major oil spill, but what happens later? Our guest Dr. Jeffrey Short is a biochemist who has investigated ecosystem effects of major spills. Working with our host Dr. Robert Spies after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, he discovered that large quantities of oil persisted in the subsurface long after the spill - a finding that was quite controversial at the time. More recently he came out of retirement to work on assessing the damage from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, where he showed that the official estimates of bird mortality were at least an order of magnitude too low. That mortality in turn caused a dramatic population increase in Menhaden, the key link in the Gulf of Mexico food chain and the second-largest commercial fishery in the US. The population explosion has led to malnourishment and greatly decreased the economic value of the fishery, as well as its ecosystem function.

Tim Bray and Bob Spies talk with Erin Zulliger of the Institute for Wildlife Studies, who has been studying Elk in northern California. Always an impressive sight, these fascinating animals have a long history here and are currently adapting to changing conditions. Listen to find out more about their lives, their predators, and their populations.