United States

**Abstract:**

The Caribbean region supports 23 extant breeding species of seabirds on nearly 900 colonies and breeding sites. Despite the large area, numerous species and colonies, conservation concern for many species, and proximity to the USA, surprisingly little is known about the ecology of seabirds in this region particularly during the nonbreeding season when birds are away from colonies for extended periods of time. We used geolocators to track the movement patterns of White-tailed Tropicbirds (Phaethon lepturus) breeding in the Bahamas. Although basic use areas at sea have been described for the species, here we assess the level of fidelity to use areas from five consecutive years of tracking data from two individuals tagged at the same colony in the Exumas. During the breeding season tropicbirds consistently frequented the northern Bahamas but also used waters adjacent to Cuba. During the nonbreeding season individuals dispersed north but also were frequently located east of Bermuda and in waters towards the mid-Atlantic ridge. Each bird showed a relatively high degree of fidelity to use areas among years. There was also a relatively high degree of overlap between the two individuals each year. Furthermore, use areas often overlapped with the location of the Sargasso Sea, an ocean gyre system in the western north Atlantic that concentrates sargassum, spawning and subadult eels, and other large marine vertebrates. Our data suggest that tropical seabirds in the north Atlantic may not only wander throughout pelagic waters but also may frequent specific marine regions where productivity is enhanced.

**Authors:**

Patrick Jodice¹, Will Mackin², Autumn-Lynn Harrison³, Yvan Satge⁴, Bradley Wilkinson⁴

¹USGS/Clemson University, ²Terra Mar Applied Sciences, ³Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, ⁴Clemson University

3rd World Seabird Conference

High site fidelity in a tropical seabird during the nonbreeding season: a 5-year case study

Welcome Seabirders!  

Welcome to Virtual World Seabird Conference 3 - vWSC3! Whether you are in your office or lab, at home, in a coffee shop or bar poaching some wifi, or at a remote field site or research vessel – we are very excited to welcome you to the third ever World Seabird Conference. 

We would like to thank ALL of you for being so patient as WSC3 was scheduled, postponed, rescheduled, revised to virtual, and scheduled again. Throughout all those iterations there was one message that remained perfectly clear – seabirders were eager to meet and share their science. If we could not meet in person then virtual it would have to be, but a 3rd WSC was something everyone wanted. That support and commitment helped the WSU Board of Directors and Member Societies sort through all of the challenges they faced to plan and hold this conference. 

The list of those that need to be thanked is long and, while we plan on recognizing many during the live closing plenary, it is important to do so here in writing as well. 

The Australasian Seabird Group was our Local Host for our plan to meet in Hobart, Tasmania. They invested substantial time and effort to find venues and plan events that we unfortunately were not able to visit. Nonetheless we appreciate their work on behalf of WSC3 and encourage all of you to thank them when you see their members in Gathertown or elsewhere during our virtual meeting. Their willingness to host created the initial excitement for WSC3 and without that our vWSC would not have been possible.

We also wish to thank the Science Program Committee, the Virtual Committee, and the Early Career Scientist Committee for their hard work planning the logistics, events, and schedule for vWSC3. These committees also had to deal with changing parameters and short timelines that made what is always a challenging task even more challenging. The Travel Awards Committee also invested time and effort in developing procedures for awarding travel funds that ultimately would not be implemented. 

Our ability to shift from an in-person to a virtual meeting, and to do so in a way that would be financially feasible, was due to the effective efforts of The International Fundraising Committee and to our financial sponsors. The IFC raised funds to support WSC3 and then, through the good relationships they built with sponsors, ensured we could re-envision how those funds could be used to support a virtual conference that would be affordable and high-quality.

We all owe the WSU Board of Directors and the Representatives of the Member Societies a great deal of thanks. They are the ones who manage the WSU and, for the past 18 months, have had to have a series of challenging meetings and conversations, have had to make a series of difficult choices, have had to do all of that while considering the short- and long-term health of WSU and the World Seabird Conferences, and did this while also managing their own challenges at their day jobs. We are grateful for their diligence, patience, foresight, and throughout all of the meetings, their collegiality. Also – a 6-year term is quite a commitment!

There would not be a WSC3 without a successful WSC1 and WSC2. Thanks go to the Pacific Seabird Group for their support of WSC1 in Victoria, Canada, and to the African Seabird Group for their support of WSC2 in Cape Town, South Africa. In each of these endeavors and for our current conference we were fortunate to work with a dependable and trustworthy partner in Podium Conferences. Michelle Smith and Marischal de Armond have become valued members of our team and have not only helped us plan conferences but have assisted and advised the WSU Chairs and Board on issues above and beyond conference planning. 

As we embark on our vWSC3 week we extend to all of you our thanks for showing up, for being patient, and most importantly for the work you do with seabirds. We are all part of a unique, global community that shares an interest, a fascination, and a passion for birds that make a living in our world’s oceans. We have advanced the science, conservation, and management of seabirds as well the ecosystems they inhabit. We are consistently impressed and motivated by the work you do. 

The WSU formed in 2010 because we saw the need for a global organization to address challenges at a global level. Over the past 11 years WSU has grown, adapted, and evolved to become the community that this week is making vWSC3 a reality. Enjoy the week, appreciate and support the friends and colleagues you have made in the community, and if you see us in a virtual hallway please stop and say hello! 

Thank you for the opportunity to serve all of you and the WSU over the past few years,

Nicholas Carlile, Interim Chair, WSU<br>
Patrick Jodice, 2nd Chair of the WSU<br><br>

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Join us for four days of science, networking and virtual engagement with delegates from around the world!

poster

**Abstract:**

The Northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) is a far-ranging pelagic-foraging seabird that can scavenge offal and discards from fishing vessels, and whose at-sea distribution is poorly understood. We modelled the foraging distribution of fulmar using GPS tracks (n=64, map attached) from nine colonies across Southeast Ireland and Scotland using biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic covariates. Behaviours were annotated to tracks using non-interpolated Hidden Markov Models to detect commuting, resting and foraging states. Areas foraged in were seen as preferred feeding habitat and tested against areas that were passed through with no foraging behaviour using a GLMM with an autoregressive correlation structure. Covariates included sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a, depth, slope, fishing effort (mobile gears) and fishing vessel presence. Fisheries data were aggregated across multiple years across the breeding season (May-August, 2012-16) to provide generalised intensity per unit area rather than assuming direct vessel interactions in time and space. Fishing effort was an important predictive variable for habitat selection; others included bathymetric slope, sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a concentration. Vessel presence and depth were dropped from the final model. The power of fishing effort to predict fulmar foraging distribution is likely due fulmars and fisheries targeting the same areas, as well as fulmar attendance at vessels to consume discards and offal. Finally we used this model to predict the at-sea distribution of fulmars breeding across the UK and Ireland. Our study demonstrates how including habitat variables based on human activity can provide greater predictive power than biotic and abiotic covariates alone for species feeding at higher trophic levels, and is one of a few to do so at a large spatial scale.

**Authors:**

Jamie Darby¹, Sophie de Grissac², Ellie Owen³, Mark Bolton³, Emily Shepard², Luca Borger², John Quinn⁴, Mark Jessopp⁴

¹University College Cork - MaREI and School of BEES, ²Swansea University, ³Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, ⁴University College Cork

Fishing effort as a covariate in predicting the at-sea distribution of a vessel-attending seabird

**Abstract:**

The first preliminary estimates of seabird bycatch mortality from certain fishing gears of the UK-registered fishing fleet in UK and adjacent waters (Northridge et al., 2020) suggest considerable mortalities for some species. Here we present the results of a Population Viability Analysis (Miles at al., 2020) that estimates the relative population gains that UK seabirds could theoretically achieve if these estimated levels of mortality were to be eliminated by bycatch mitigation measures (and assuming no other pressures are operating). Preliminary results indicate that bycatch mitigation would benefit great cormorant and northern fulmar the most, resulting in a population increase after 25 years of approximately 2% and 7%, respectively (assuming a density-dependent response in growth rate with increased population size). Regional breakdowns identified potentially even greater gains. As part of international efforts, we summarise work undertaken by the UK fishing industry, in partnership with governments and scientists, to reduce bycatch. We conclude by exploring evidence gaps, related challenges and potential solutions.

**Authors:**

James Miles¹, Matt Parsons², Catharine Horswill³

¹University of Southampton, ²Joint Nature Conservation Committee, ³ZSL Institute of Zoology and University College London

Estimating seabird population responses to bycatch mitigation in UK fisheries

**Abstract:**

Records of bycatch of sensitive species in the Mediterranean include seabirds, elasmobranchs, cetaceans and sea turtles; however, information is scarce and unequally distributed, and there are significant gaps in certain sub-regions, and for specific fishing gears. Bycatch represents one of the most significant threats to seabirds globally. In the Mediterranean and Black Sea it is estimated that 5,100 seabirds/year are bycaught in longline fisheries, although this is likely to be an underestimate. Often, seabird bycatch is addressed in isolation from bycatch of other taxa. A multi-taxa approach can help to understand the bycatch problem and tackle it in a comprehensive way. It can reveal spatial and temporal overlap between bycatch of different taxa and allow the effectiveness of mitigation measures to be assessed across all affected taxa, therefore facilitating the identification of solutions that benefit multiple taxa, or at least avoid trade-offs between taxa. We will present the findings from data collection on multi-taxa bycatch in Cyprus, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey following a standardised data collection methodology adopted by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean. It provides a first insight into bycatch in some of the data scarce areas of the Mediterranean and represents a first step towards comparable data at the regional level. We will also explore some of the benefits and opportunities of a multi-taxa approach to bycatch as well as some of the challenges.

**Authors:**

Daniel Mitchell¹, Antonio Vulcano¹

¹BirdLife Europe and Central Asia

Understanding and tackling seabird bycatch within a multi-taxa approach - results and lessons from the Mediterranean

**Abstract:**

Seabirds have learnt to exploit fishing discards across the globe, as an abundant and predictable source of food that may complement their natural prey uptake. Mediterranean seabirds make particularly extensive use of this resource, including endemic and threatened species, given the high degree of overexploitation of their natural prey in the region. Discards play an important role in the ecology of these seabirds, and a discard ban envisaged by the current EU Common Fisheries Policy (2013), the so called landing obligation, might have significant short-term impacts. As a starter, it might reduce food availability to sensitive seabird populations, which might be unable to compensate the lack of discards with current scarcity of natural prey. This would first affect breeding performance, but effects on survival might also arise, either directly (starvation) or indirectly (e.g. increased predation by opportunistic species, or enhanced bycatch when seabirds intensify their association with fisheries seeking for food). Effects at community level might also occur through increased competition. To properly understand these effects, it is important to know the extent of the discards reduction. Despite its name, the discard ban only affects fish species regulated by either quota (rare in the Mediterranean) or minimum landing size. Considering data on recent discard composition in NE Spain, the removal of regulated species from the discard fraction would represent a reduction of 47% in biomass, but only 19% in potential energy. However, depending on how it is logistically handled, the landing obligation might make easier for fishermen to land the entire catch, thus posing a severe constrain to the local seabird community. Whatever the case, proper studies will be necessary to monitor the landing obligation implementation, and measures to minimize its impact on seabirds should be adopted while their natural prey stocks remain overexploited.

**Authors:**

José Manuel Arcos¹

¹SEO/BirdLife

European fishing discard ban: how will it affect Mediterranean seabirds?

**Abstract:**

Seabird bycatch is one of the most pervasive threats to seabird populations globally. South Africa is a hotspot for foraging seabirds where they overlap with hundreds of fishing vessels, using a diverse array of gear that are known to cause seabirds deaths. Between 2006 and 2010 the Albatross Task Force (ATF) in South Africa was able to take advantage of a fishery seeking Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, to implement seabird bycatch mitigation measures. In a few years it became one of the most successful examples of seabird bycatch reductions the world over. Since then however, broadscale implementation of mitigation measures has been less straight forward, and with limited conservation resources, coupled with an increasing urgency to reduce bycatch, the ATF has taken a multi-pronged approach, to increase uptake. Leveraging 'carrots' and 'sticks', while maintaining its grass-roots engagement with fishermen, it advocates for bycatch reduction at multiple institutional and government levels. From simple gains through the adaptation of a bird scaring line, assisting fleets to be compliant, to tackling new gear types for which mitigation still needs to be developed, prioritizing conservation efforts are key. The tuna pole and line fishery is thought to have low ecosystem impact and be of minimal threat to seabirds or other Endangered Threatened and Protected (ETP) species. However, small vessel size and no obligation to carry on-board observers has meant that there is no data to support this claim. By taking advantage of the fishery's pre-assessment study for MSC certification the ATF was able to advocate for the need to assess seabird bycatch as part of a 3 year observer programme, with minimal cost implications. We describe the fishing methods, and risk to seabirds by presumed safe gear types. We present preliminary data and levels of bycatch, and discuss possible mitigation options.

**Authors:**

Andrea Angel¹, Reason Nyengera¹

¹BirdLife South Africa

Seabird bycatch and prioritizing fishing fleets: tuna pole and line fishery

**Abstract:**

Fishing is the main economic activity in waters of the Argentinian Continental Shelf (ACS). Various seabird species attend trawlers and longliners seeking food facilitated by the fishing operation as well as discards and offal as a byproduct of the catch and processing. During the austral spring, large numbers of Great Shearwaters (GSH, Ardenna gravis) forage over the ACS. This species has been registered interacting with longliners targeting skates or toothfish Dissostichus eleginoides, ice-chilling and freezer trawlers that target hake Merluccius hubbsi and has high rates of bycatch in coastal pelagic trawlers targeting anchovy Engraulis anchoita. This study analyzes the overlap between the distributions of adult (2009-2010 period) and immature (2006, 2008-2009, 2009-2010 periods) GSHs and a range of fishing fleets, as well as assessing the effect of fishing effort on shearwater foraging behavior. The database comprised fisheries effort for 9 fleets, and 21 GSH tracked by satellite telemetry. The tracking data were analyzed with switching state-space models (SSSM) to infer behavior (transitory or foraging) at each location. The overlap was analyzed using the UDOI index (no overlapping = 0, complete overlap UDOI ≥ 1), while the effect of fisheries on foraging behavior was analyzed using GLMM (individual identity as random factors). The largest overlap for all years and age pooled was observed with the pelagic trawlers (UDOI ≥ 0.45), demersal coastal fleets (≥ 0.32), and ice-trawlers target hake (≥ 0.25). For immatures ice-trawlers target hake (2006 and 2008-2009 periods), freezer longiners (2006) and coastal demersal trawlers (2009-2010 period) were the fisheries that showed positive effect in the foraging behavior (i.e. foraging was most likely with increased fishing effort), while for adults ice-trawlers target hake was the only fishery with effect significantly positive. This preliminary analysis as a proxy of risk of interaction constitutes the basis for further studies to define areas and times of higher sensitivity for shearwaters attending fisheries.

**Authors:**

Jesica Paz¹, Robert Ronconi², Juan Seco Pon¹, Sofía Copello¹, Peter Ryan³, Marco Favero¹

¹Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC), Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, CONI, ²Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment and Climate Change Canada, ³FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, DST-NRF Centre of Excellence, University of Cape Town

Spatial overlap and effect of fishing effort on the foraging behavior of the Great Shearwater (Ardenna gravis) on the Argentine Continental Shelf

**Abstract:**

GPS loggers can provide precise and accurate data on the movements of many seabirds species, and have enabled ecologists to document relatively large amount of foraging trips. Modeling such foraging trajectories may attempt (1) to explain mechanisms underlying observed behaviors and (2) to elucidate ecological processes at the colony scale by simulating multiple trajectories. Existing modeling approaches to seabird movement mainly addressed the first objective and they are yet soon limited when used for simulation. Individual-based model (IBM), based on ad-hoc formulation and empirical parametrization generally become quickly intractable as the number of individual increases, while state-space models (SSM), based on rigorous statistical inference, consist in 1st order Markovian models calibrated at the local scale which can lead to description of foraging trips overly simplistic. We introduce a 'state-of-the-art' tool from artificial intelligence, Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), for the simulation of seabirds foraging trips. GAN consist in a pair of deep neural networks that aim at capturing the data distribution of some experimental dataset, and that enable the generation of new instances of data that share statistical similarity. We demonstrate the outstanding ability of GAN to simulate 'realistic' foraging trajectories and evaluate its benefits over classical methods such as state-switching Hidden Markov Models (HMM). In particular, synthetic trajectories derived from GAN are able to reproduce spatiotemporal scales characteristic of observed trajectories. We discuss the potential use of such an approach to tackle various key challenge in seabird ecology, such as predicting of the potential impact of environmental variability on seabird colony, or testing for the "Ashmole halo" hypothesis with synthetic data. GAN provide indeed a ultra-flexible framework for trajectories simulation that could further account for environmental conditions, social interactions or even bio-energetics models.

**Authors:**

Amédée Roy¹, Sophie Lanco-Bertrand¹, Ronan Fablet²

¹Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), ²IMT Atlantique

Artificial intelligence for the generation of synthetic seabirds foraging trajectories

**Abstract:**

European shags (Gulosus aristotelis) are vulnerable to disturbance by boats and to bycatch in gillnet fisheries and the population is in decline. Intensified coastal development, e.g. aquaculture and kelp harvesting, pose potential additional threats that call for impact assessments and marine spatial planning. As European shags breed in numerous colonies scattered along the coastline, it is a challenge to identify and protect the most critical foraging habitats. Even with existing knowledge about the location of the colonies, it remains an implausible task to document the habitat use for each and every colony, although this is highly relevant information for management purposes. Predicting foraging areas of a given population based on the tracking information from birds in other colonies could be a solution to this dilemma. Here, we analysed tracking data from five different European shag colonies spread along the Norwegian coast over a latitudinal gradient of more than 1700 km: Hornøya (70°23'N, 31°09'E), Røst (67°26'N, 11°54'E), Sklinna (65°12'N, 10°59'E), Runde (62°23'N, 5°36'W), and Jarstein (59°09'N, 5°10'E). Minimum two and maximum ten years of tracking data existed for each colony. For each colony we identified the foraging areas and their environmental characteristics (depth, presence/absence of kelp forest, bottom substrate...) and quantified the consistency in foraging areas between years. We then predicted the foraging areas of a given colony based on the results from the other colonies and compared the modelled results with the true data to test the performance of the predictions. Our research will contribute to strengthen our understanding of the foraging ecology of European shags, and help identify the most important foraging areas required for their conservation. More generally, our results can help to improve the use of tracking data for marine spatial planning.

**Authors:**

Nina Dehnhard¹, Signe Christensen-Dalsgaard¹, Jenny Mattisson¹, Arnaud Tarroux¹, Tycho Anker-Nilssen¹, Svein-Håkon Lorentsen¹

¹Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA)

Multi-year and multi-colony tracking of European shags ? towards better predictions of foraging habitats within and between colonies

**Abstract:**

The effects of intraspecific competition on seabird foraging movements are relatively well studied, but the impacts of predation are less well known. Many seabirds are apex predators, but the small size of storm petrels puts them at risk of predation by other seabirds. Predation risk has a strong influence on the nesting location and breeding behaviour of storm petrels but does predator avoidance also reduce the potential foraging area available to these small species? We have GPS tracked European Storm Petrels (Hydrobates pelagicus) breeding on Mousa, Shetland, UK between 2014 and 2018. Using data on predator distributions and remotely-sensed environmental data, including sea-surface temperature and wind speed, we investigate the relative influence of a variety of factors on storm petrels' movements and at-sea distributions. We provide new insights into the at-sea ecology of one of the world's smallest seabirds.

**Authors:**

Zoe Deakin¹, James Waggitt², Peter Evans², Rob Thomas¹, Renata Medeiros¹, Frank Hailer¹, Mark Bolton³

¹Cardiff University, ²Bangor University, ³Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

A quiet corner of the playground? The influence of predator distributions, intraspecific competition and environmental conditions on the movements and marine distribution of European Storm Petrels

High site fidelity in a tropical seabird during the nonbreeding season: a 5-year case study

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Fishing effort as a covariate in predicting the at-sea distribution of a vessel-attending seabird

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