Three years from now, if an oil spill like the recent one in the San Francisco Bay happens off Ventura County's coast, we should know exactly how it affects the populations of pelicans and plovers, willets and whimbrels.

That's because Chris Kahler and Garrick Thomsen have walked miles of shoreline and counted hundreds of birds trying to figure out how many birds make their home here.

The two are working on a joint project between CSU Channel Islands and the U.S. Minerals Management Service to get baseline data of bird populations in case there's an accident with one of the oil rigs off the coast.

"These species are good barometers of change because they are long lived and they are an indicator of what is happening," said Don Rodriguez, chairman of the environmental science and resource management program at CSUCI.

Kahler, who recently graduated, started the project this spring, and Thomsen, a senior, is going to continue it as his senior project.

The project will be handed down to other students over the next few years.

The aim is to monitor 14 beaches in the county for three years to get an accurate snapshot of the bird populations.

The monitors are observing about 10 percent of the beaches in the county once a month. A similar study was done 10 years ago, and the researchers are hoping to duplicate it, allowing a comparison of populations then and now.

Greg Sanders, a biologist with Minerals Management Service who is helping with the study, said it's imperative to get the pulse of an ecosystem before disaster strikes.

"One thing that is a problem with oil spills is we don't have a good understanding of the area before the spill hits," he said.

If a spill does happen — and everyone is hoping it doesn't — the study will be able to tell scientists just how badly it affected populations. It will also help determine the health of shorebird populations in general, Sanders said. He's hoping to share the information with other science and conservation groups when it's completed.

Too often shorebirds, which live and forage mainly in the tidal zone, are overlooked in research, he said. The ones that live in the water and the ones on land get most of the attention.

Kahler and Thomsen can relate.

"I didn't think about shorebirds before this project," Thomsen said. But after doing their research project, they have a whole new appreciation for birds.

Now Thomsen's favorite shorebird is the American avocet with its long legs and curled bill. Kahler is more partial to the black-necked stilt with its thin red legs.

As Kahler walked Ormond Beach on Wednesday, counting every gull and plover he saw, he marveled how he one day might see the same bird again hundreds of miles away.

"You can go all up and down the coast from Antarctic all the way down to Mexico and you might see the same bird you are seeing here today," he said.