Birds of the Yellow Sea

This video says about itself:

31 October 2016

The intertidal mudflats of the Yellow Sea contain the most important stopover sites for migratory shorebirds in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway – a flyway that has transported birds from breeding grounds in the Russian and Alaskan Arctic to wintering areas in Southern Asia, Australia and New Zealand for hundreds of thousands of years. The productivity of the Yellow Sea’s mudflats and the food they provide to migratory birds are critical to the survival of many species.

This film provides a primer on the basic biological principles of migratory shorebird ecology and why the Yellow Sea is a critical international hub for bird migration.

Film is also available in Korean, Mandarin, Japanese and Russian.

Filmed and narrated by Gerrit Vyn

Edited by Tom Swarthout

Music:

“Trip,” “Long Road,” “Ways,” Ehrlich, Loy (SACEM) Kosinus APM (ASCAP), Courtesy APM

This video says about itself:

31 October 2016

The Yellow Sea lies at the center of one of the most populated regions on earth. More than 420 million people live in it’s vicinity and the pressure on natural resources cannot be overstated. Already more than half of the Yellow Sea’s intertidal areas have been converted to land through a process dubbed “reclamation” and the pace of this reclamation is accelerating.

If the remaining intertidal areas are lost, long distance migrant bird species and the livelihoods of people that make their living from these mudflats will be lost as well. Already, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper’s population has declined to only a few hundred individuals and the IUCN has stated “that unless major steps are taken taken to reverse current trends, the East Asian-Australasian Flyway is likely to experience extinctions and associated collapses of essential and valuable ecological services in the near future.”

Through satellite imagery, animations and on the ground footage this film visualizes the scale and speed of changes that have occurred along the Yellow Sea’s coastlines in recent years.