Collect birds in plastic bags and bring them back to someone for later identification. They can be frozen, if necessary or stored somewhere where they will stink. Make sure that your counts are conducted before people get onto beaches and try to clean up the dead bodies or rescue live oiled birds.
3) tabulate the total numbers of live oiled birds that are collected by the general public and taken to rehabilitation centers for treatment. Most of these birds will die but they must be recorded anyway. Live oiled birds will be treated at these centers but information should be recorded on when they were removed from a beach and where. If you can make sure that centers record how many birds of each species they get, then you don't need to collate this information until after the spill is over. Or get them to save and freeze their dead birds for later identification.
4 ) the Coast Guard should be describing the extent of the oil at sea and where it reaches land. So you should not have to worry about that until after the spill is over.
Additional things to consider:
a) conduct a carcass drift experiment. Try to collect a sample of dead oiled birds that are floating on the water. put tags on the birds and put them back in the water. When they wash up on shore in a few days or weeks, people will find them and send information on where and when the tag was found to the address on the tag (e.g. Japan Alcid society) . John will address this more.
b) the science of oiled bird rehabilitation is not well developed. Most birds die even after cleaning and release to the wild. You need specialized equipment and experienced personnel to care for oiled birds which is very expensive. The general public will want to try to care for and clean oiled birds anyway because they want to do something to help the birds. Try and encourage these people to collect live oiled birds and bring them to a veterinarian but after you have conducted your single counts on many beaches throughout the spill zone. Make sure that people are aware that oil is toxic. But the Japan Alcid Society should spend most effort documenting the spill and estimating the numbers of birds killed, not rehabilitatioh, I will talk to scott Newman and get him to contact you by email you, with regard to possible rehabilitation to do or euthanizing birds. It might be worth trying to rehabilitate Japanese Murrelets if you are going to put any effort into this.
Stay in touch and John and I will try to provide additional advice once you can FAX us a map of the area involved and when you provide more questions. I'll FAX you a copy of a paper on oil spills. John will send some papers too.
I presume you have read Kazama (1971) about mass mortality of the Japanese MurreLet from an oil spill in the Japan sea? Hopefully, this is not a repeat event.
The PSG meeting is in Portland. I,ll be leavin8 on Tuesday 7 January in the late afternoon and returning on Sunday 12 January. Email or call me before I leave if you need more information now. John is not going to the PSG meeting so you can contact him. Good luck!
