Using remote sensing tools to determine the drivers of marine predator foraging behaviour

Marine species are under mounting global pressure from a range of potential threats, including habitat loss, over-exploitation and climate change. To adequately protect species, it is essential to consider not only individuals, but how species utilise the habitats around them. Identifying important foraging areas for seabirds is a key component of making effective conservation decisions. While a growing network of officially protected areas is preserving terrestrial wildlife habitats, the identification of equivalent important marine areas is hindered by the complexity of observing and tracking marine species. Additionally, environmental fluctuations due to both natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change may alter the future locations of these sites. Existing Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) around the UK do not reflect current seabird foraging habitat and their static design makes them unable to compensate for future climate induced oceanographic changes. Rapidly developing technology, including animal-tracking devices, satellite remote sensing platforms and predictive modelling provide opportunities to address some of these issues. This project will utilise an existing dataset of approximately 2000 tracks from 8 species of satellite-tagged UK seabird. The focus will be identifying the environmental drivers of seabird foraging behaviour and the location of key seabird habitats.