Given complex legal statutes that apply across marine, estuarine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats, transboundary life histories pose management challenges for marine birds. Evidence-based management requires integrating needs and constraints of decision-makers and scientists. Impacts from marine research are thus amplified using co-production across stakeholders.

We present a brief history of co-production in ocean-going seabird research in the Gulf of America. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil blow-out and spill revealed an acute lack of information about Gulf avian resources. Monitoring for Gulf birds required commitments from an array of conservation partners, including federal agencies, state wildlife agencies, non-governmental organizations, joint venture partnerships, and landscape conservation cooperatives. Consequently, the volunteer Gulf of Mexico Avian Monitoring Network (GoMAMN) established a community of practice to: (1) carry out restoration objectives and monitoring priorities; (2) design and implement surveys; and (3) share information. GoMAMN identified aerial and vessel-based surveys as vital for expanding the knowledge base for seabirds in the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (GoMMAPPS; BOEM-sponsored, 2017-2019) and Vessel Surveys for Abundance and Distribution of Marine Mammals and Seabirds (VSAD; DWH Open Ocean TIG-sponsored, 2023-2025) were implemented subsequently. Each Gulf survey program required co-production from NOAA, BOEM, USFWS, USGS, academic institutes, and for- and nonprofit organizations.

Gulf survey data from these and other projects yielded evidentiary criteria for: (1) updating seasonal status, distribution, and relative abundance for >100 marine bird species; (2) evaluating chronic hydrocarbon exposure to marine birds at offshore oil and gas platforms; (3) identifying primary composition and geographic origins of restoration-eligible species; and (4) detecting range extension in an imperiled species. Future Gulf work is expected to evaluate seabird flight behavior around marine energy infrastructure, develop a spatially-explicit means to estimate seabird densities impacted at marine spills, and classify species disproportionately affected by the DWH spill.