Translating settlement money into larger numbers of common murres is a complex project. The immediate goal is to reestablish a breeding colony where Apex oil had driven one away. At its peak, Devil's Slide Rock hosted 2,900 murres. The larger goals are to help the local murre population return to its pre-spill numbers and to protect the species from future ecological disasters. The more breeding colonies spread out along the coast, the better the chances that at least some will escape the next oil spill.
Biologists know better than to keep all their eggs in one breeding colony.
The 20th century has been rough on them, and even the 19th century ended badly. The murres' biggest, bustlingest breeding colony is on the Farallone Islands, just north of San Francisco. As many as six million murres nested there in the early 1800s. In the late 1850s, however, the Farallone Egg Company started harvesting murre eggs. The chicken population couldn't keep up with the burgeoning human population of California, so the murre eggs were gathered to meet the demand.