The foraging behaviour of seabirds: defining and predicting home range areas

In recent years, seabird tracking studies have become ever more popular as a means of informing and evaluating the effectiveness of marine protected areas and offshore energy developments as well as in understanding the ecology and behaviour of seabirds. This study uses tracking data collected from the European shag, Black-legged kittiwake, Northern gannet and Brown booby to identify important foraging areas around four seabird colonies located in the UK, Channel Islands and Anguilla and examines the impact of offshore renewable energy developments in the Channel Islands. As well as providing examples of how seabird tracking data can be useful in informing marine spatial planning, this study also considers the impact that sample size and the sample composition may have on the foraging areas predicted for any colony. Small sample sizes are a common feature of tracking studies, often due to logistical and financial constraints, meaning that seabirds are often tracked over short spatial and temporal scales which may not fully represent the important foraging areas and behaviours of the colony or individual. This study therefore provides recommendations to improve the predictions of area use and foraging strategy for future tracking studies to ensure the most representative and useful data is collected and used to inform marine spatial planning issues