Evaluating the use of photography for monitoring feeding habits of common murre (Uria aalge)

Seabirds are often used as indicator species for changes in marine ecosystems due to the species visibility and sensitivity to changing conditions, such as changes in prey abundance. They often reside in habitats affected by anthropogenic impacts such as large-scale fisheries and pollution. Understanding the connection between seabirds and their surrounding environment can give us important insight about the ecology of the ocean and how anthropogenic pressures affects it. Studying feeding habits, and foraging behavior especially, is useful for understanding seabird´s responses to changing environments. Feeding studies are commonly used in seabird monitoring and requires a lot of time and resources. Monitoring of seabirds are also logistically challenging, and the risk of disturbing bird colonies must be considered. It can be especially complicated when studying cliff nesting seabirds such as the common murre, Uria aalge, the study species for this thesis. Photography as a method for monitoring seabirds may limit the need of people on site, hence minimize disturbance and save time and resources. This study provides insight in whether it is a viable option to use photography instead of on-site field studies when monitoring sea birds. This was accomplished by installing cameras and monitor a feeding study at Stora Karlsö, Sweden, parallel with performing the usual monitoring in the field. This thesis makes it clear that a camera study very well could replace the field study without any larger concerns, although, improvements need to be considered if the study is to maintain a high quality and for results to be reliable