In September each year, over one million Short-tailed Shearwaters arrive at Phillip Island to breed from their Aleutian Island feeding grounds (near Alaska, USA), most completing this extraordinary 15,000km migration in less than four weeks.

Phillip Island's coastal cliffs are important breeding habitat for these seabirds. Short-tailed As top predators and major consumers of marine resources, shearwaters play an important ecological role in connecting marine and terrestrial habitats by delivering essential ocean nutrients to their island nesting grounds. Operating on a global scale (between the Southern and Northern hemispheres) means that Short-tailed Shearwater health is an important indicator of ocean ecosystem health and so protecting them also protects the many plant and animal species they share their vast habitat with.

Given this, it is critically important for marine scientists to better understand the implications of marine and terrestrial threats to Short-tailed Shearwaters including commercial fishing operations, ingestion and entanglement of plastics and marine debris, artificial light pollution, climate change, introduced predators, habitat destruction and invasive weeds in order to protect them.