Albatrosses Following Fishing Vessels: How Badly Hooked Are They on an Easy Meal?

摘要: Fisheries have major impacts on seabirds, both by changing food availability and causing direct mortality of birds during trawling longline setting. However, little is known about the nature spatial-temporal extent interactions between individual vessels. By studying a system in which we had fine-scale data bird movements activity, near real-time information vessel distribution, provide new insights association threatened albatross with fisheries. During early chick-rearing, black-browed albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris from two different colonies (separated only 75 km) showed significant differences degree fisheries, despite being nearly equidistant to Falklands fishing fleet. Most foraging trips either colony did not bring tracked individuals close vessels, proportionally time effort was spent ships. Nevertheless, few repeatedly visited may indicate they specialise fisheries-linked sources so are potentially more vulnerable bycatch. The evidence suggests that this population has reliance fisheries discards at critical stage its nesting cycle, hence measures limit waste Patagonian shelf also reduce attractiveness risk incidental mortality, would be high overall conservation benefit.