The recipient of Memorial University's Leslie Tuck Avian Ecology Award, an endowed scholarship started by friends of the Natural History Society (now Nature NL) has their winning essay published by Nature NL. This year's winner, Molly M. Morrissey (MSc Candidate, Dept. Biology, Memorial University of Newfoundland) contributed the following essay, which discusses innovative efforts to understand seabird population and survival in Newfoundland and Labrador. by Molly M. Morrissey The world’s oceans have undergone significant, rapid changes since the onset of the industrial revolution. Human activities, directly and indirectly, are nearly universally recognized as a major contributor to these changes. One consequence has been massive food-web shifts, from which Newfoundland has not been spared. Overfishing, poor data collection, and weakly enforced quotas led to the near loss of the Atlantic cod, a fish synonymous with Newfoundland. The Newfoundland cod population collapsed in the early 1990s and is not even at half…