Cracking the Case of the Missing Roseate Terns

Helen Hays first saw fishermen wearing her bird-tracking bands as jewelry in 2002.

The American ornithologist and conservationist flew down to Brazil’s northeastern corner after getting a call from Pedro Cerqueira Lima, a fellow ornithologist. He was worried about their research subjects. 

She and Lima, who is also a veterinarian in Brazil, had been partnering for almost 10 years, hoping to learn more about small, endangered seabirds called roseate terns (Sterna dougallii). However, they had started to vanish. Each bird left New York’s Great Gull Island with a numbered stainless-steel band clasped snugly to its leg. After arriving in Brazil, they never returned to nest, unlike all their predecessors.

Lima started traveling up and down Brazil’s coast in search of the roseate terns, named for the pale pink color of their breast and belly feathers during breeding season. He had hoped to see a glint of metal in the sun to guide him to the missing birds.

But it was the bands alone that he would eventually find, strung together as necklaces and bracelets around the necks, wrists, and ankles of fishermen in Quixabá Beach, a distant coastal community of 3,000 in the state of Ceará. The men had no idea the birds that visited the beaches every year were being studied by scientists both close to home and all the way in the United States. They certainly never imagined the bands on their legs were meant to monitor the birds’ movements. They thought what they had found was some type of valuable metal—maybe silver—and decided it would be better displayed on their own appendages than those of the black-and-white birds.

Lima had been working in the region for years and already knew some of the fishermen well. So he sat with them and talked, explaining the importance of the birds and their conservation. The roseate terns, he said, even helped the fishermen in their work, guiding them to more profitable areas of the ocean, since the seabirds eat the same small fish as the bigger ones the men hoped to catch and sell. The leg bands, Lima told them, helped scientists like him better understand the birds and, in turn, keep them safe.

“Without inclusion, there is no conservation,” Lima said. “As a researcher, if your scientific knowledge doesn’t reach these communities, then there’s no point.”

With that in mind, Lima decided to reach out to a local nonprofit, AQUASIS, which works on conservation issues related to aquatic ecosystems in Ceará. The focus of his research was shifting back to his home state of Bahia, and he wanted to make sure Hays had the support she needed in Brazil to continue to protect and monitor the roseate terns.

“The fishermen said they removed the bands and let the birds go, but I knew that wasn’t possible,” he said. “They would have to kill the birds to get them off. They didn’t do it with malice; they just didn’t know any better at the time.”

Once the fishermen understood what the bands were and the work the scientists were doing, they became some of the best spokespeople for bird conservation in the area. On that first day they met Hays in 2002 and heard what she had to say, they returned 96 bands.

Hays and the team at AQUASIS knew they had to reach as many people in Quixabá Beach and the surrounding fishing communities as possible if they wanted to continue this type of regional environmental education. They started working on a pamphlet that explained the work they did with birds. A cross between a picture book and a comic strip, it got the word out in a clear and concise way.

With the right information in hand, the residents of Quixabá Beach felt empowered and became so dedicated to conservation in their community that they wanted to do more. In 2007, the first Roseate Terns Festival was born. It started out as a simple way to educate more people about roseate terns, conservation, and scientific research, and has since become one of its most popular events.

Because it is community-led, local culture is an important part of the festival and the residents’ connection to it. While beach cleanups and talks about environmental issues in the region are crucial to the event, it’s the much-awaited mini boat races and Coco meetups (groups that celebrate northeastern culture through traditional music and dance) that are often the initial draw for people. The last edition of the festival also hosted a handicrafts fair, where many artisans made record sales. 

“They are the ones who make the festival happen,” Felipe Braga Pereira, a biologist and coordinator of environmental education at the AQUASIS Migratory Birds Project, said. “We’re not going to come in from outside the community and tell them what they should do. We’re here to help organize, help get their ideas off the ground, and provide information about conservation.” 

Hays took part in running the festival until she passed away earlier this year at 94. While Lima doesn’t work on organizing the event, he does attend when he can. When he went in 2017, he ran into a fisherman whom he met back in 2002 and asked if he thought anyone might still have some bands tucked away. He managed to collect another 15, all old, since nobody in Quixabá had touched a roseate tern since becoming educated on their importance.

The seabird is still listed as endangered in both the US and Brazil. Some of its biggest threats now are power lines and wind turbines, which both slice through its migratory routes and can lead to deadly collisions.

“The future of these birds, the future of the environment, depends on communities like these,” Lima said. “There’s no other alternative. They just need to understand what they have and what they want to leave behind.”