The Insight of Murres

Extinction is a choice.

Common Murres - Monterey Bay 2023

I snapped a shot of this flying loomerie on a cold April day in 2023. I was deep in the bay of Monterey, thinking nothing of their plight, but taken by the elegant beauty of their flight and the gentle angle of the springtime light. The moment passed as quickly as it formed, like clouds on the windiest day, and I once again found myself staring into the abyss in search of supreme beings.

This trip was for my forty-fifth birthday, and I had come to see the unpredictable transient orcas which never came to be for me. Much to my chagrin, orcas don’t live for my whimsy, but instead have complex and exciting lives out in the sea hunting grey whale calves and their own mysteries.

When the day was over, I scrolled through my shots and this one jumped out at me. I didn’t know what kind of seabirds they were but loved their formation and how their bodies looked more like penguins than albatross. How did those dumplings ever take to the skies? That evening, I looked them up and discovered there is a beautiful being on our planet called the common murre.

“Oh, it’s common…,” I thought. What a bummer. And here I thought I saw something special — something rare. I dismissed my spiritual experience for a word some two-hundred-year-old ghost had tacked onto the name of a miraculous being who can live in places I wouldn’t survive a day in and had flown this planet eons before neanderthals took their first steps.

A few days ago, I read in the scientific journal Science about a mass extinction event of common murres which occurred in 2015. It turns out the northern Pacific Ocean had warmed too much, killed off their primary food sources, and a decade later their population has still not come close to recovering. Over 4 million common murres died in what is now known as the largest mass extinction event in recorded history – so far.

Climate change is the simmering pot we all share, my friends. Despite what oligarchs and their politicians want to dissuade us from believing, these deaths were hastened by anthropogenic climate change. In other words, the planet is being warmed because of the choices made by the common human.

In my lifetime alone, a short forty-seven years, 73% of our wildlife has been killed off through the actions, choices, and exploitation wrought by human beings. A child born today has barely 25% of the wildlife left that I had as a child. Think about that. Please think about how you can change this trend each day in your life, with each purchase you make.

Everything has a true cost. Find something beautiful and fight for it before it’s gone.

I went in search of orcas for that birthday, but instead was gifted with the insight of murres. Like canaries in the coalmines, they had a message for me to share with you. The common murre is far less common as they once were, and if we don’t adapt and focus on environmental conservation, the common human also faces rapid decline and utter annihilation.

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