This seagull was banded by COA students on Maine's Great Duck Island during the summer of 2015 and showed up six months later in Mississippi.This seagull was banded by COA students on Maine's Great Duck Island during the summer of 2015 and showed up six months later in Mississippi. Credit: Brian Johnston

Rats with wings. That’s how people often refer to herring gulls and great black-backed gulls because these seabirds seem so common, so ubiquitous, that they are practically a nuisance. But scientists report that gull populations on the coast of Maine are plummeting at an alarming rate, right under our very noses. And they don’t really know why or what that decline portends for other marine species.

Listen to Coastal Conversation: Gulls and Seabirds in the Gulf of Maine