Use of radar detectors to track attendance of albatrosses at fishing vessels.

ABSTRACT: Despite international waters covering over 60% of the world's oceans, understanding of how fisheries in these regions shape ecosystem processes is surprisingly poor. Seabirds forage at fishing vessels, which has potentially deleterious effects for their population, but the extent of overlap and behavior in relation to ships is poorly known. Using novel biologging devices, which detect radar emissions and record the position of boats and seabirds, we measured the true extent of the overlap between seabirds and fishing vessels and generated estimates of the intensity of fishing and distribution of vessels in international waters. During breeding, wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) from the Crozet Islands patrolled an area of over 10 million km² at distances up to 2500 km fro

SUBMITTER: Weimerskirch H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5811893 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature