Drivers and demographic consequences of seabird foraging strategies in a changing environment

Coastal marine ecosystems are undergoing rapid change due to multiple anthropogenic impacts including overfishing, climate change, pollution and renewable energy generation (1). These changes have important impacts on marine organisms, including top predators such as seabirds, and have led to increased concern for protected populations (2). Understanding how seabirds adjust their behaviour with respect to spatio-temporal variation in their environment and food resources to shape energetics and demography is crucial for predicting their ability to cope with future environmental change, and for devising effective conservation measures (3). Individual foraging decisions are shaped by a range of environmental drivers including availability of suitable habitat, oceanographic and weather conditions (4, 5, 6). Foraging strategies are also influenced by intrinsic factors such as sex, body condition, breeding stage, or interactions with other individuals including use of social information and negotiation of offspring provisioning effort between breeding partners (7, 8). However, while plasticity in seabird foraging behaviour is well documented, robust understanding of how key drivers shape responses to environmental change is lacking which hinders our ability to quantify and predict impacts of anthropogenic activities on protected species, delaying our ability to deliver offshore renewable energy capacity needed to meet net zero targets.
This project will use one of the most extensive datasets on seabird at-sea activity, location and demography in the world, spanning 35 years, as well as additional targeted data collection to determine key drivers and demographic consequences of foraging strategies in an inshore, benthic-foraging species, the European shag. The project aims to: (1) identify drivers of foraging behaviour across a range of environmental conditions and population densities; (2) determine the consequences of foraging strategies for productivity and survival; and (3) forecast impacts of change in productivity and survival on population trajectories under different scenarios of future human activity.