Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

Ocean Survival: Seabird Responses to Climate Change, Prey Availability and Fishing-Gear

This research proposes to investigate the trophic interactions and behavioral ecology of eastern Canadian seabirds in response to climatic, ecosystem and human-induced perturbation and change. The research exploits information from seabirds to understand the biological consequences of climatic and anthropogenic influence and interaction.

Rapid environmental changes are creating novel, sometimes insurmountable challenges for human and non-human species. Climatic and human impacts are synergizing in unprecedented and unpredictable ways. Perhaps nowhere are such interactions more significant for the biosphere and more pervasive than in the oceans where polar meltdowns, acidification, warming, plastic/pollutant accumulation and over-fishing are increasing.

Throughout the world’s oceans, seabird top predators are the most visible, most wide-ranging and most accessible marine animals. They survive in a bountiful environment where food is quasi-predictable and the rigors of survival can be extreme on a daily basis. Through it all, seabirds are ocean-honed Olympian survivors and the dominant harbingers of marine environmental change and perturbation.

The proposed research integrates key basic and applied projects through behavioral and conservation biology to forge new insight into how seabird top predators cope with the realities of environmental change. Two overarching projects are directed at: 1) Parental Tactics (flexibility constraint, tolerance, success) under varying prey (forage fish availability) and ocean climate conditions, and 2) Seabird x Fishery Interactions (by-catch mortality in fishing gear).

Real-time comparisons of parental foraging behavior, offspring provisioning, prey availability and ocean temperature will test the hypothesis that warm-water events impose negative consequences on offspring and breeding success. Our hypothesis is that hot-water drives prey to cooler water at depth and to more boreal regions imposing challenges for foraging parents. Greater parental effort for self- and offspring-provisioning are predicted during warmer ocean temperatures with poorer the prey availability.

Working with inshore fishermen in coastal Newfoundland communities, we will quantify seabird mortality in surface-set (herring) and deep-set (cod) gillnets (demonstrated to have significant population effects on diving seabirds in eastern Canada). U sing information on seabird sensory capability and behavior, we will develop modifications of fishing gear and of fishing practice (gear sets and hauls at different time of day; durations of soak times) in t ests to reduce by-catch without affecting target fish catch . We will compare gillnets with other gear (cod pots, hand-lines) to assess best economic and ecologic fishing practices.