Before the emergence of small and light tracking technology, tracking the movements of seabirds throughout the year was very difficult, for some species, close to impossible and extremely expensive. As a result, we knew little about which ocean regions the different species inhabit outside the breeding season.
Now, with a combined and coordinated effort of researchers all around the North Atlantic participating in SEATRACK, a range of tracking technologies has enabled mapping of important seabird wintering areas and migration routes on a much larger scale and in greater detail than ever before, yielding new and important information needed for the management of seabirds in North-Atlantic waters.
Study setup
Locations
The study area encompasses 75 study sites encircling the Labrador, Greenland, Barents, Norwegian, North, Baltic, and Irish Seas, which includes colonies in Canada, Greenland, Russia, Norway incl. Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
Species
Sixteen species were selected as focal species, representing four ecological groups, i.e. pelagic divers, pelagic surface feeders, coastal surface feeders and coastal divers. To document the variation in habitat use across ocean regions, priority has been given to two species with a breeding range spanning the whole study area: black-legged kittiwake and common guillemot. Additionally, species characteristic of a specific region and feeding guild were selected, provided they breed in accessible colonies and exist in large enough numbers to offer a sufficient sample size.
Selecting study sites, priority was given to colonies representative for the distribution range of a given species. Emphasis was also placed on working within colonies where seabird research had already been established, thus providing the possibility of combining tracking data with other research as well as simplifying logistics and reducing costs considerably.
Tracking technology
SEATRACK utilizes several tracking technologies to map and monitor seabird migration patterns and non-breeding distribution across the North Atlantic. These have been chosen based on the target species’ behaviour and general body size and range from tiny 0.4g light-level loggers to 15g GPS tags that communicate via the mobile phone network.
More about tracking technology
Standardization
The tremendous logistical challenge that is the coordinated annual data collection for 16 species all across the North Atlantic and the subsequent data processing is made possible thanks to a rigorous logistics, standardization, and infrastructure pipeline.
Science Plan
The overreaching goal of SEATRACK is to identify the distributions of non-breeding seabirds from colonies in the North Atlantic in order to better understand how changes in environmental conditions and other threats encountered during migration or on the winter grounds affect their demography and population dynamics. To achieve this goal, the project is informed by a Science plan. This is periodically updated and serves as a facilitation tool for all Partners. It encourages active participation in developing research ideas and enables partners to take the lead on analyses and publications. Applications for external research funds are also encouraged.
Web applications
The SEATRACK web-applications are intended to provide open access to the project’s results in a manner that is simple to use and understand. So far two application have been built; (1) to explore and compare the diversity of seasonal movements, and (2) to investigate the modelled density of seabirds throughout the North Atlantic year-round.