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Save the Shadowskimmer — Description

!!!Warning, slight Spoilers!!!
Serina, open Ocean near the coast of serinarcta
Late Ultimocene 270 Million+a few thousand Years PE Woodcrafters survive timeline
Whitecrown´s folly was both a curse and a blessing at the same time, and its effects will be felt for eons to come.
While a gigantic wildfire was somewhat prevented by the crazy plans of a daydreamer, lesser wildfires would still erupt, and these were merely lesser compared to the wildfire that would have raged without the countermeasures, these were still gigantic and would cover areas the size of the meridian islands in some cases. The great thaw happened slightly slower than in the cannon timeline. The effects were still disastrous. Serina woulnd´t succumb to the ice age, but would change drastically.
Civilization had to adapt.
At first the fires would drive people form the coasts onto the islands where they would be safer from the fires, and afterwards the great that would raise sea levels with disatrous consequences - the islands and shoreline which were the home for serinas people would be submerged by hundreds of meters of water, and the once so productive shallow sunlit seas would now be too deep for sunlight to reach, and so plant growth would cease.
What did the people of serina do?
They had to flee to the mainland again, where plants now grew in abundance. WIth the help of the wumpos they bonked savage gravediggers and other beasts, that were hostile to death, but not everywhere, so those still persisted further inland.
They settled inland and brought their animals, including those form the islands, such as the flightless sparrowgulls with them.
Even the Daydreamers and Greenskeepers could settle in the continent - inside the many lakes and streams that were formed by the coal that had been burned away.
Once the woodcrafter helped the forest to survive by bringing the remnants near the ocean, now the sea stewards would bring their ocean with them inlands. They dug massive channels and converted the land into a maze of waterways.
Once they had adjusted, they would help to preserve whatever ocean species they could.
One of the more endangered species is the shadowskimmer, a primitve ornimorph. Their numbers had crashed, as the oceans warmed and became less productive, their food -such as small fish - dwindled, and the survivours sufferd from strarvcation.
To make matters weven worse, they are elusive, they are ususally airborn all the time, bacause they lack hindlegs. The larvae immediately transform into a small legless flighted juvenile upon pupation. Only few of them surivie to adulthood.
Their larvae grow in streams and are small and hard to find.
Nonetheless the sea stewards found ways to help the shadowskimmer. Their technology developed rapidly, as their settlements became larger on the now degalciated lands, ideas would spread, this process was already initiated, when they cooperated to melt the ice bridge near the equator the during the end of the ice age with coal, to prevent it from fully forming.
Now they have industrialized and have steam power and elelcticity, and even aereial drones!
Some of these drones were used to locate the last shadowskimmers and the sea stewards would drop fish into the ocean for them to eat.
Dead, malnourished corpses of shadowskimmers were washed ashore together with dead fish, porplets and other animals.
The sea stewards still found a few adult shadowskimmers, even if their feathers were visibly deteriorated due to malnutrition.
They gained the trust of the shadowskimmers and would gather the eggs they dropped into streams, and put them into protected bodies of water to develop. So more larvae survived into adulthood and the newly hatched juveniles would disperse, and hopefully not be eaten and suvive into adulthood an repoduce again.
The Great Anoxia or the Dying of the ocean, which was a bypdocut of the warming of serina, was still utterly disastrous,and caused the people of serina to migrate inland and towards the poles.The oceans near the equator experienced prolonged anoxia for centuries, and unfortunately not all species could be saved.
The iconic Shadowskimmer was among the lucky ones, even if their populations would never rise to the heights they were at during the ocean age, beause of the reduced food availability, they are here to stay, their numbers will stabilize and they will be part of the hothouse age, with a diminished role.
-- This Fanart is based on Serina, a speculative evolution/worldbuilding project, which is the sole intellectual property of .
You can view his work on sites.google.com/site/worldofs… . --
This post is inspired by an article about how the populations of the common murre have dropped due to mass starvation caused by reduced food availability in the warmed oceans.
Hopefully the common murre will survive...