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If you want a vivid barometer for the health status of worldwide marine ecosystems, look no further than the global seabird population.

You can think of species such as gulls, terns, pelicans, and albatrosses as biological scouts. They survey coasts across the world, playing fundamental roles in food chains both beneath the water and on land. If something has gone wrong in these ecosystems, the status of these birds will indicate as much.

Unfortunately, new research estimates that the global seabird population has dropped 70 percent since the 1950s. To put it lightly, that's not good.

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