SOUTHEASTERN N.C. — Dozens of wounded and dead brown pelicans have washed up on the southeastern seaboard annually in the last decade, all exhibiting identical and unnatural injuries. Two local wildlife rescue organizations are investigating possible culprits in hopes of putting an end to the abuse.
READ MORE: Local rep, fishermen call on state to improve fishery management after flounder season cancellation
While some of the brown pelicans have been found alive, many are dead, all sporting the same injuries: a broken wing, called a “torsion fracture,” which comes from the wing being twisted around like a corkscrew — something that doesn’t occur naturally.
Brown pelicans are a federally protected species under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act established in 1918, and intentionally harming or killing a migratory bird is a felony crime that can incur up to a year in prison.
“ They can get them if they’ve got direct proof,” Mary Ellen Rogers, director of Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter in Oak Island, said.
Rogers called a meeting in November with the Oak Island Police Department and Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office to detail the severity of the issue and raise awareness. At the meeting, Rogers announced that Sea Biscuit is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone with information leading to the arrest of the people responsible for the avian abuse.
Since November, SkyWatch Bird Rescue Director Amelia Mason says her organization, located in Castle Hayne, has found about a dozen pelicans with the wing fracture on the beaches of Topsail and Surf City, a number she said only accounts for the birds that survived.
“ There’s many, many, many more that were dead on the beaches or died before they came in,” she said.
Mason has also found a few gulls with the same injuries recently. The wounded birds normally start showing up in November and stop around February.
Rogers hasn’t seen any so far this season. Rogers said it has been a temporary relief after finding 23 wounded pelicans and more than 60 dead along Oak Island’s beaches this time last year.
“ At this point, we’re kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Rogers said.
Evidence from the injuries suggests humans are grabbing pelicans by their wings and swinging in circles until the wings snap, before being thrown back into the ocean, Mason said. She explained pelicans are slow creatures and easy to grab hold of if they land close enough to humans, as they often do on commercial fishing ships in an attempt to grab a snack from a large catch.
“ It seemed really weird — like, why are their wings spun around so many times?” Mason said. “It probably has to happen over your head because when the wing opens up, it’s quite long. So, they would be spinning them around in a circle above their head and tossing them back into the ocean.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is currently investigating similar injuries found along the state’s Central-Atlantic coast after more than 40 brown pelicans with broken wings were brought to the Florida Wildlife Hospital in Palm Shores last February; only three survived and the rest had to be euthanized.
A Floridian pathologist contacted Rogers around this time as the pelicans began showing up in Florida as soon as they stopped in North Carolina. Rogers then shipped several pelican carcasses down to the Sunshine State to be examined and compared with the injuries that were found there.
“ The injuries during their commercial fishing season were matching ours — identical,” Mason said. “ So there’s no more suspicion. This is truly happening.”
Mason and Rogers believe there is a single commercial vessel that comes to North Carolina from out of state to trawl and fish during the winter and leaves dozens of wounded and dead pelicans in its wake.
“When avian migration starts, Florida closes its season, but we don’t,” Mason said. “So then it moves up. Now you see [injured pelicans] in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and then as soon as our season closes, it starts back up in Florida. So, it’s obvious that they’re following the fishing season.”
Mason and Rogers suspect two perpetrators.
“ There’s suspicion around this white ship, we are told by authority, and also around a, quote-unquote, large, beautiful, blue ship,” Mason said. “That’s all we know.”
Sea Biscuit has drones its volunteers fly periodically during the winter months to try to get a glimpse of a possible culprit, but say it’s very hard to find the source of abuse. Mason and Rogers claim the white boat ducks out of sight when a drone flies overhead — which they both agreed is reasonable as it has no identification tags. Mason said this doesn’t prove it’s guilty of harming the pelicans, though. The blue ship, however, has been coming to the North Carolina coast for years, but Rogers and Mason said they weren’t at liberty to relay why this boat was put on their watch list.
The guilty parties can only be prosecuted if they are caught red-handed or a witness is willing to testify of the abuse in court. However, the ships are difficult to monitor, even with drones, because they are so far off-shore and many people in the fishing industry are not forthcoming with information, even if they do know something.
“ A man approached [Rogers] one night after a meeting and he said he heard two men bragging in a bar about it, but he does not want to follow through and testify in court because he’s afraid they’re going to come burn his house down while he sleeps at night,” Mason said. “The people in this industry will probably retaliate if they find out someone snitched on them because it is a multi-billion dollar industry.”
“ These guys don’t want to testify,” Rogers reiterated.
Officers from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission are responsible for enforcing catch limits and other marine regulations in Brunswick County. According to Rogers, they are out on the water monitoring the out-of-state boats.
Port City Daily reached out to the commission to inquire more about the investigation, but didn’t receive a response by press due to experts being out of office for the holidays.
If a wildlife officer finds a dead or injured pelican floating in the water behind a boat, the protocol is to bring the pelican aboard and assess if it’s suffering a human-inflicted injury. If so, with its proximity to the boat ahead of it, officers have probable cause to board the ship and conduct a search-and-questioning, potentially leading to prosecution.
Rogers hasn’t used her drones yet this year, as they haven’t had any pelicans wash up yet near her shelter. Mason and Rogers are asking for the public to keep their eyes peeled and come forward with any information they might have, and use their own drones to record any evidence. They both hope that involving the public and continuing to fly drones over the boats will intimidate the guilty fishermen to stop harming the birds, even if they don’t ever catch the ship responsible.
“The result is not so much that we’ll catch them in the act, but the result is: They’re not going to do it,” Rogers said. “They see that drone up there and they’re not going to hurt a hair on a pelican’s head. We’re watching them.”
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