Co-written by Brien Weiner (South Shore Audubon Society) and environmental reporting desk.

Executive Overview

When a team of conservation researchers and ornithologists fitted 20 nesting Black Skimmers (Rynchops niger) with advanced GPS transmitters at Lido Beach this summer, their initial objective was relatively modest: to map local foraging routes and identify critical micro-habitats within the back bays of Long Island, New York. Situated on the southern half of Nassau County, the Lido Beach colony represents the largest breeding population of Black Skimmers in the region. Wildlife officials hoped that tracking data would shed light on why this particular stretch of coastline supports successful nesting while other regional colonies struggle.

Instead, the tracking data blew the scope of the project wide open.

What researchers uncovered was a compelling and cautionary tale of marine food scarcity, energy expenditure, and ecological interconnectedness. The telemetry units revealed that adult skimmers were routinely undertaking astonishing, exhausting journeys—flying up to 110 kilometers (68 miles) one way—just to secure basic meals for themselves and their developing chicks.

As ornithologists cross-referenced the GPS paths with marine biology reports, a single, undeniable driver emerged: the localized scarcity and subsequent return of Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus), a small, oily forage fish that serves as the caloric engine of the Atlantic coastal ecosystem.

The findings not only illustrate the remarkable adaptability of these coastal seabirds, but they also underscore a fragile ecological reality. When human harvesting and environmental shifts disrupt the populations of foundational forage fish, apex predators and coastal birds pay a heavy price. With regulatory decisions looming at the state and federal levels, this summer’s tracking data has transformed from a localized study into an urgent call for systemic marine conservation.

Detailed Chronology: The Summer Tracking Project

Setting the Stage at Lido Beach

As the spring nesting season commenced along the dynamic barrier islands of Long Island, researchers carefully captured and outfitted 20 adult Black Skimmers with lightweight, solar-powered GPS telemetry units. These units were designed to transmit precise location data at regular intervals, allowing biologists to monitor flight speeds, altitude, roosting sites, and hunting grounds.

At first, the patterns matched historical assumptions. The birds spent their days loafing on the warm sands of Lido Beach and making short, routine flights into the adjacent salt marshes and shallow back bays. However, as the breeding season progressed into early summer, the data streams began to tell a more dramatic story. The birds were no longer staying close to home.

The Epic Journeys of Michelle and Ronald

Among the cohort of tracked birds, two individuals quickly emerged as the subjects of intense interest among researchers: "Michelle" and "Ronald."

Michelle, a seven-year-old female Black Skimmer who originally hatched at the Lido Beach colony in 2019, proved to be an aviation pioneer. While the majority of her peers restricted their movements to western Long Island waters, Michelle shattered expectations. She became the sole tracked bird to cross the open expanses of the Long Island Sound, executing repeated, grueling flights to urbanized and suburban coastal zones in Bridgeport and New Haven, Connecticut. When she wasn’t braving the Sound, she was spotted foraging far to the east near Babylon and navigating northern airspace toward the Bronx.

Ronald, an adult male skimmer, carved out a completely different operational geography. Rather than heading north across the Sound, Ronald favored nocturnal foraging runs. Under the cover of darkness, he routinely flew southwest, crossing open water to reach Sandy Hook and the Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey—a round-trip distance exceeding 130 kilometers when accounting for local maneuvering. Closer to his nesting grounds, Ronald also spent significant hours combing the tidal marshes west of the colony in Bay Park, an area notable for hosting a major wastewater treatment facility currently undergoing extensive infrastructure upgrades to improve back-bay water quality.

Behavioral Splits and Nocturnal Flights

As researchers compiled the broader dataset from all 20 tagged birds, distinct behavioral patterns materialized across gender lines and time domains:

• Gender-Based Foraging Asymmetry: Male skimmers consistently favored western trajectories, hunting in the waters toward New York Harbor and New Jersey. Females, conversely, predominantly headed eastward along the south shore lagoons and inlets.
• The Midnight Shift: A staggering proportion of the longest foraging excursions occurred under complete darkness, specifically between the hours of 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.

This nocturnal flying habit pointed directly to an underlying ecological stressor. Black Skimmers are uniquely adapted visual-tactile foragers, skimming the surface of calm water with their specialized lower mandibles trailing below the surface to snap up fish. While they prefer to hunt in daylight when prey is near the surface, the necessity of flying tens of miles through the pitch-black night indicated that local food sources during the early season were simply too depleted to sustain them during normal hours.

Supporting Context & Metrics: The Menhaden Connection

To understand why these birds were burning vital caloric reserves on marathon nocturnal flights, researchers had to look beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The answer lay in the population dynamics of the Atlantic menhaden—often referred to by commercial fishers as "bunker" and by ecologists as "the most important fish in the sea."

The Menhaden Deficiency

Menhaden are nutrient-rich, filter-feeding pelagic fish that travel in massive, dense schools. They are consumed by virtually every major marine predator along the Eastern Seaboard, ranging from striped bass and bluefish to humpback whales, ospreys, bald eagles, and, crucially, Black Skimmers.

Historical data collected from the Lido Beach colony in 2024 revealed that Atlantic menhaden constituted a staggering 41 percent of the total diet fed to Black Skimmer chicks. However, during the critical early weeks of the 2026 breeding season, local monitoring showed that menhaden were virtually absent from the immediate back bays of Long Island. Without their primary caloric staple, adult skimmers were forced to scour distant estuaries, traveling to Connecticut and New Jersey just to find scattered schools of forage fish.

The Turning Point

This desperate commuting pattern persisted until a sudden environmental shift occurred between July 31 and August 8. During this brief window, massive schools of Atlantic menhaden migrated back into the local waters surrounding Lido Beach.

The behavioral response from the tracked skimmers was immediate and dramatic. Within 48 hours of the menhaden’s return, the GPS data showed a sharp contraction in foraging ranges. The grueling night flights to New Jersey and Connecticut ceased. Instead, Michelle, Ronald, and the rest of the colony redirected their efforts entirely to the local back bays, spending significantly less energy to capture richer, more abundant meals right in their own backyard.

Quantifying the Cost: Reproductive Productivity

While the late-season arrival of menhaden provided a welcome reprieve for adult birds, the early-season scarcity left a permanent mark on the colony’s reproductive success.

Ornithologists measure seabird success through "productivity"—the average number of fledged chicks produced per nesting pair.

• Historical Baseline: Normal, healthy productivity for the Lido Beach colony typically ranges between 0.31 and 0.38.
• The 2026 Metric: Due to the prolonged early-season food shortage and the resulting energetic strain on brooding parents, the recorded productivity for 2026 dropped to 0.25.

This drop of nearly 35 percent below historical norms highlights a stark biological truth: even if adults manage to survive environmental shocks through sheer endurance, their offspring often bear the brunt of the deficit. A delayed food pulse can mean starvation for altricial chicks, directly suppressing population growth for a species already vulnerable to coastal development, sea-level rise, and human disturbance.

Official Statements & Regulatory Outlook

The revelations of the Lido Beach GPS tracking project have arrived at a critical juncture for coastal wildlife policy. Conservationists and regional environmental groups are wasting no time translating these empirical findings into advocacy.

The Voice of Conservation

"This summer’s tracking project was originally designed to decode the micro-habitat preferences that make Lido Beach a resilient sanctuary along the Atlantic flyway," notes Brien Weiner of the South Shore Audubon Society. "What Michelle, Ronald, and the eighteen other birds actually showed us is that the long-term viability of Long Island’s largest Black Skimmer colony is entirely tethered to the management of a small silver fish swimming hundreds of feet beneath their flight paths."

Environmental advocates emphasize that the plight of the Black Skimmer is emblematic of a broader coastal syndrome. Because menhaden are heavily targeted by industrial reduction fisheries—which harvest millions of pounds of fish annually to process into animal feed, fertilizer, and bait—local availability can plummet even when total regional biomass appears stable on paper.

Upcoming Regulatory Battles

The immediate legislative battlefield shifts to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). In November, this vital regulatory body—which sets catch limits and management frameworks for menhaden across New York and other coastal states—is scheduled to vote on a pivotal addendum.

This upcoming addendum could significantly strengthen menhaden protections along the Atlantic seaboard for the next several years. Conservation scientists argue that adopting these protections is non-negotiable if coastal states wish to maintain functioning ecosystems.

Furthermore, the benefits of menhaden conservation extend far beyond the sands of Lido Beach. Because menhaden serve as a foundational prey species, robust protections will ripple upward through the marine food web, safeguarding not only Black Skimmers but also iconic species such as:

• Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus)
• Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
• Commercially and recreationally vital predatory fish, including striped bass and bluefish.

Future Outlook

As the 2026 field season draws to a close and researchers begin retrieving and analyzing the final data packets from the Lido Beach GPS units, the path forward is clear. Science has successfully mapped the invisible threads connecting a seabird’s nocturnal flight path to the migratory patterns of a schooling fish.

However, translating this science into policy requires sustained vigilance. The upcoming ASMFC vote in November represents a litmus test for regional resource managers. Will regulatory frameworks adapt to account for the localized needs of breeding seabirds, or will industrial extraction continue to dictate the availability of marine forage?

For Michelle, Ronald, and the generations of Black Skimmers yet to hatch on the barrier islands of Long Island, the stakes could not be higher. Their survival depends not just on the protected sands where they lay their eggs, but on the political will to protect the rich, complex marine web that sustains them from wingtip to tideline.