China FAQ, Part 1

Beachgoers know the seagull as either feathered friend or foe, swooping in for a French fry or potato chip, an old piece of bread. But they’re actually quite smart, and they’re just trying to live. In an effort to teach people more about the beach-loving birds and maybe even inspire greater affection, Claude Willaert, who works in Belgian coastal education and comedy, created the European Gull Screeching Championship in 2020. Held in De Panne, a Belgian beach town, the competition started as a local event, but has since expanded to include 70 people from 14 different countries. It recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.

Seagulls can be a polarizing group, but scientists say they shouldn’t bear so much of our ire. "They're very charismatic creatures and definitely get a bad rap for sometimes aggressive behaviour in the breeding season," scientist Emma Caulfield told the BBC in 2024. "But they are part of our natural world and they're just taking advantage of the hand that's been dealt them." The hand in question is having to fend for themselves when their environments keep shrinking as humans occupy more and more space in their natural habitats. What we see as sneaky snack stealing is actually a mode of survival. As Gull Screeching Championship juror and Flanders Marine Institute representative Jen Seys told the CBC, “their sounds, their calls and their acrobatic behaviour, it's just part of the sea coast. So you need to balance that. We need some more sympathy for the seagulls." So for Willaert, the competition became a way to teach people to embrace the seagull in a new way, to “make sea gulls sexy again,” as he told the Times.