We are pleased to announce the publication of the following note in Marine Mammal Science:

Vivier F, Guinet C, Jeanniard-du-Dot T. Defining areas of intensive foraging activity for a top marine predator, the Antarctic fur seal: Compromises between effort and accuracy. Mar Mam Sci. 2019;1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12635

Abstract

Conservation of species requires knowledge of their feeding and breeding habitats to implement effective protection plans, often based on tracking of animals’ movements and behaviors. Recent progress in biologging resulted in availability of finer-scale information of at-sea behaviors, but with greater time and resource costs. We thus question whether such data pinpoint significantly more accurate ecologically-relevant areas than traditional tracking to define Marine Protected Areas (MPA). To do so, we equipped 18 female Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) with biologgers that recorded GPS locations, dive depths and tri-axial acceleration. We then estimated geographical occupancy from GPS locations at different resolutions (min 3/day), diving locations from depth, and locations of feeding events from acceleration, and spatially determined Areas of Ecological Significance (AES) for all parameters. We then compared their performance using a Fuzzy-Kappa approach. Our results revealed high correlations between spatial structures of each AES defined (> 0.95). We conclude that geolocation data from GPS provided sufficient information to accurately infer AES and that allocating more time and resources for finer-scale foraging data is not necessary in the context of defining MPA for a top marine predator.

Download here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mms.12635

For any questions, you may also contact me at fvivier@hawaii.edu.

Kind regards,

Fabien Vivier, MSc in Marine Biology

PhD. Student,

Marine Mammal Research Program, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology

University of Hawaii at Manoa,