Ocean utilization of marine top predators at Marion Island: Recent highlights and future perspectives

Abstract

Marine top predators have been studied extensively at Marion Island over the past few decades, largely driven by conservation needs of specific species. The majority of this research has been conducted on a species by species basis, and large amounts of data have been collected on diet and foraging distributions over varying time periods. There is a growing recognition of the importance of studying multiple marine top predator species at the ecosystem-level to gain insights into large scale environmental changes. As these top predators generally target areas of high productivity, they have also increasingly been used to identify ecologically important areas for conservation-based spatial planning. The SANAP funded project I report upon here involve distributional and dietary investigations on a suite of marine top predator species breeding at Marion Island (four penguin, albatross and petrel species and two fur seal species., as well as a subset of species breeding at the neighbouring Crozet archipelago within the new funding cycle. An overarching objective has been to identify areas of importance and high productivity relevant for spatial planning around the Prince Edward Islands using tracking data. All historical tracking data from the Prince Edward Islands were accordingly collated into a single database and through recent advances in habitat modelling this data was used to identify important habitat. In this presentation I highlight these areas and report on some of the recent research highlights within the overall project. I conclude by giving an overview of our future project priorities within the current SANAP funding cycle. - Abstract as displayed in the - Abstract booklet. The presentation on the day may differ from the - Abstract.