Spatial scales of marine conservation management for breeding seabirds

Oppel, Steffen; Bolton, Mark; Carneiro, Ana P. B.; Dias, Maria P.; Green, Jonathan A.; Masello, Juan F.; Phillips, Richard A.; Owen, Ellie; Quillfeldt, Petra; Beard, Annalea; Bertrand, Sophie; Blackburn, Jez; Boersma, P. Dee; Borges, A.R.; Broderick, Annette C.; Catry, Paulo; Cleasby, Ian R.; Clingham, Elizabeth; Creuwels, J.C.S.; Crofts, Sarah; Cuthbert, Richard; Dallmeijer, Hanneke; Davies, Delia; Davies, Rachel; Dilley, Ben J.; Dinis, Herculano; Dossa, Justine; Dünn, Michael J.; Efe, Márcio Amorim; Fayet, Annette L.; Figueiredo, Leila; Frederico, Adelcides Pereira; Gjerdrum, Carina; Godley, Brendan J.; Granadeiro, José Pedro; Guilford, Tim; Hamer, Keith C.; Hazin, Carolina; Hedd, April; Henry, Leeann; Hernández-Montero, Marcos; Hinke, Jefferson T.; Kokubun, Nobuo; Leat, Eliza H. K.; Tranquilla, Laura McFarlane; Metzger, Benjamin; Militão, Teresa; Montrond, Gilson; Mullié, Wim C.; Padget, Oliver; Pearmain, Elizabeth J.; Pollet, Ingrid L.; Pütz, Klemens; Quintana, Flavio; Ratcliffe, Norman; Ronconi, Robert A.; Ryan, Peter G.; Saldanha, Sarah; Shoji, Akiko; Sim, Jolene; Small, Cleo; Soanes, Louise; Takahashi, Akinori; Trathan, Phil; Trivelpiece, Wayne Z.; Veen, Jan; Wakefield, Ewan D.; Weber, Nicola; Weber, Sam; Zango, Laura; Daunt, Francis; Ito, Motohiro; Harris, Michael; Newell, Mark A.; Wanless, Sarah; González‐Solís, Jacob; Croxall, John P.

doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2018.08.024

Cited by 92 publications

(87 citation statements)

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“…Since we recorded a substantial number of wet bouts within the last 24 h of trips as birds were approaching the colony, the absence of wet activity at the beginning of trips is likely unrelated to the recording resolution. Nevertheless, we found that a negligible proportion of wet activity (< 5% of bouts) occurred within the Pitcairn Islands no-take reserve, which covers the Pitcairn Islands Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) (Avagliano et al 2015; Risotto 2015); this emphasises the challenges associated with the at-sea protection of wide-ranging marine predators such as gadfly petrels (Lavers et al 2014; Clay et al 2017; Ramos et al 2017; Oppel et al 2018). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…We acknowledge our conclusions are limited by the small number of individuals tracked with GPS loggers; nonetheless, this study provides novel insights into the fine-scale foraging behaviour of gadfly petrels, including how they balance their foraging requirements in particularly unproductive environments. Also, due to their extremely large foraging range, which results in them spending < 20% of their time on foraging trips within the Pitcairn Islands Marine Reserve, we suggest that Murphy’s petrels are unlikely to be amenable to protection using area-based measures, and will require broader conservation measures at appropriately large scales (Oppel et al 2018). …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Divergent foraging strategies during incubation of an unusually wide-ranging seabird, the Murphy’s petrel

et al. 2018

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Divergent foraging strategies may emerge within a population due to a combination of physiological and environmental factors; yet to persist, neither strategy should offer a consistent selective advantage over the alternative in the long term. Murphy’s petrels Pterodroma ultima from Henderson Island (24°20′S, 128°20′W) in the South Pacific Ocean are highly vagile, and exhibit two distinct foraging trip types during incubation; similar proportions of birds undertake either looping trips around the South Pacific Gyre to waters off Peru (hereafter “East”) or trips south-west of the colony towards the Subtropical Front (“South”) (mean maximum ranges of c. 3800 or 2000 km from the colony, respectively). However, the relative benefits of the distinct trip types remain unclear. Through tracking birds with GPS and salt-water immersion loggers in 2015, the fine-scale foraging behaviour was examined for East (trip durations: 14.1–19.8 days, maximum ranges 2387–4823 km) and South trips (12.9–25.8 days, 1565–1991 km). Data on behaviour classified from GPS tracks, the number of wet bouts per hour (a proxy for landing rates) and wind speeds, were used to distinguish two distinct foraging modes: birds on East trips spent more time in directed movement, whereas those on South trips spent a greater proportion of time in area-restricted search (ARS) behaviour. East trips were associated with higher overall mass gain, and wet bouts occurred in equal proportions during directed movement and ARS behaviour. This suggests that in unproductive marine environments, it may be more profitable to maximise area covered to increase the chances of encountering prey. Analysis of lower-resolution geolocator data (collected from 2011 to 2014) indicated that individuals were largely consistent in trip type between years. Since birds that conducted East trips were 19% lighter on departure from the colony and experienced more frequent tailwinds on foraging trips, we speculate that these birds may benefit from reduced movement costs, whilst also experiencing reduced competition for foraging opportunities.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00227-018-3451-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Divergent foraging strategies during incubation of an unusually wide-ranging seabird, the Murphy’s petrel

et al. 2018

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“…, Oppel et al. ). Unlike the highly fecund target species of pelagic fisheries, many at‐risk bycatch species in pelagic fisheries (1) have “slow” life history traits, where even small changes in anthropogenic mortality levels can cause large changes in population sizes (Goñi , Hall et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…, Oppel et al. ). For instance, with the exception of bluefin tuna species, discussed below, there is very limited documentation of spawning aggregations for large pelagic target species (SCRFA ), with, for example, a handful identified for istiophorid billfishes (e.g., black marlin, Istiompax indica ; Domeier and Speare , Erisman et al.…”

Section: Theoretical and Observed Evidence Of Pelagic Mpas Achieving mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do static and dynamic marine protected areas that restrict pelagic fishing achieve ecological objectives?

2019

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There has been a recent proliferation of large‐scale marine protected areas (MPAs) containing pelagic habitats. These contribute substantially toward meeting the area‐based goal of Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 and to managing pelagic ecosystem pressures, including fishing. We assessed theoretical and empirical evidence for the achievement of ecological objectives by static and dynamic spatial management of pelagic fisheries. Exceptionally few studies have assessed ecological responses to MPAs that constrain pelagic fisheries, leaving substantial uncertainty over their efficacy. Assessments have provided a limited basis for causal inferences and have not evaluated whether other management tools would be more effective. Pelagic MPAs have relatively high promise to mitigate fisheries bycatch of species of conservation concern with “slow” life history traits and that form temporally and spatially predictable hotspots, and for some species, to protect habitats important for critical life history stages. It would be challenging to design MPAs to maintain absolute biomass levels of target stocks near targets and above limits: MPAs would need to be extensive to account for broad and variable distributions, and account for catch risk outside of the MPA, including from displaced fishing effort and fishing‐the‐line. For non‐overexploited stocks, which is the status of most target pelagic species and their prey, there would likely be little response in absolute stock biomass to an MPA. While pelagic MPAs have a higher promise of increasing target stocks’ local abundance, evidence with a robust basis for inferring causality is needed. Reducing fishing mortality of prey species might not affect the biomass of their pelagic predators because prey species experience light fishing pressure and because there may be a weak correlation between the absolute abundance of forage fish and their predators. There is an especially limited basis for predicting the effects of MPAs on fisheries‐induced evolution (FIE) in pelagic species. We describe how pelagic MPAs could be designed to achieve five ecological objectives without causing cross‐taxa conflicts and exacerbating FIE. To fill substantial gaps in knowledge, we prescribe counterfactual‐based modeling of time series data of standardized catch records to infer causation in assessments of ecological responses to pelagic MPAs.

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Looking beyond the horizon: An early warning system to keep marine mammal information relevant for conservation

Agardy¹,

Cody

Hastings

et al. 2019

Aquatic Conservation

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Important marine mammal areas (IMMAs) are discrete portions of habitat, important to marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation. Although IMMAs are not a blueprint for marine protected areas or other conservation designations, they are useful for providing a foundation for marine spatial planning and systematic conservation planning that can then lead to protected areas or special spatial regulations. To be most useful for supporting management and conservation, however, the information coming out of IMMAs needs to reflect current conditions. An ‘early warning system’ is proposed with a generic set of indicators to flag when marine mammal species in IMMAs require management interventions due to changing distributions or decreasing populations. Rather than signifying that quantitative thresholds have been reached, these indicators comprise alerting information derived from visual or acoustic census, satellite imagery analysis, whale‐watching logs, or increases in mortality reported by stranding networks that can trigger additional targeted research. Although it is possible that in some regions data will be sufficient to provide quantifiable indicators, the system is meant to rely on existing data sources, and be adaptable to the circumstances of each region. Regional expert groups can utilize early warning system information and feed it into IMMA‐related spatial planning in two ways: by nominating additional areas of interest, and by providing a scientific rationale for revising IMMA boundaries, to be considered at the next decadal IMMA regional expert workshop. IMMA‐driven consolidation of information that is as current as possible will prove valuable for enhancing regional cooperation to conserve marine mammals, and will be useful as countries implement new protected areas to conserve marine mammals and other marine biodiversity.

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Spatial scales of marine conservation management for breeding seabirds

Cited by 92 publications

References 90 publications

Divergent foraging strategies during incubation of an unusually wide-ranging seabird, the Murphy’s petrel

Divergent foraging strategies during incubation of an unusually wide-ranging seabird, the Murphy’s petrel

Do static and dynamic marine protected areas that restrict pelagic fishing achieve ecological objectives?

Looking beyond the horizon: An early warning system to keep marine mammal information relevant for conservation

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