Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action
Global targets for area-based conservation and management must move beyond threshold-based targets alone and must account for the quality of such areas. In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, a region where key biodiversity faces unprecedented risks from climate change and where there is a growing...
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021-01-01
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Series: | Frontiers in Marine Science |
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Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.602972/full |
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doaj-990ebeae0d30407d99ea1684aa691c39 |
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record_format |
Article |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Jonathan Handley Marie-Morgane Rouyer Elizabeth J. Pearmain Victoria Warwick-Evans Katharina Teschke Katharina Teschke Jefferson T. Hinke Heather Lynch Heather Lynch Louise Emmerson Colin Southwell Gary Griffith César A. Cárdenas Aldina M. A. Franco Phil Trathan Maria P. Dias Maria P. Dias |
spellingShingle |
Jonathan Handley Marie-Morgane Rouyer Elizabeth J. Pearmain Victoria Warwick-Evans Katharina Teschke Katharina Teschke Jefferson T. Hinke Heather Lynch Heather Lynch Louise Emmerson Colin Southwell Gary Griffith César A. Cárdenas Aldina M. A. Franco Phil Trathan Maria P. Dias Maria P. Dias Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action Frontiers in Marine Science marine protected area fisheries Spheniscidae Pygoscelis Aptenodytes CCAMLR |
author_facet |
Jonathan Handley Marie-Morgane Rouyer Elizabeth J. Pearmain Victoria Warwick-Evans Katharina Teschke Katharina Teschke Jefferson T. Hinke Heather Lynch Heather Lynch Louise Emmerson Colin Southwell Gary Griffith César A. Cárdenas Aldina M. A. Franco Phil Trathan Maria P. Dias Maria P. Dias |
author_sort |
Jonathan Handley |
title |
Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action |
title_short |
Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action |
title_full |
Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action |
title_fullStr |
Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action |
title_full_unstemmed |
Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action |
title_sort |
marine important bird and biodiversity areas for penguins in antarctica, targets for conservation action |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
series |
Frontiers in Marine Science |
issn |
2296-7745 |
publishDate |
2021-01-01 |
description |
Global targets for area-based conservation and management must move beyond threshold-based targets alone and must account for the quality of such areas. In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, a region where key biodiversity faces unprecedented risks from climate change and where there is a growing demand to extract resources, a number of marine areas have been afforded enhanced conservation or management measures through two adopted marine protected areas (MPAs). However, evidence suggests that additional high quality areas could benefit from a proposed network of MPAs. Penguins offer a particular opportunity to identify high quality areas because these birds, as highly visible central-place foragers, are considered indicator species whose populations reflect the state of the surrounding marine environment. We compiled a comprehensive dataset of the location of penguin colonies and their associated abundance estimates in Antarctica. We then estimated the at-sea distribution of birds based on information derived from tracking data and through the application of a modified foraging radius approach with a density decay function to identify some of the most important marine areas for chick-rearing adult penguins throughout waters surrounding Antarctica following the Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) framework. Additionally, we assessed how marine IBAs overlapped with the currently adopted and proposed network of key management areas (primarily MPAs), and how the krill fishery likely overlapped with marine IBAs over the past five decades. We identified 63 marine IBAs throughout Antarctic waters and found that were the proposed MPAs to be adopted, the permanent conservation of high quality areas for penguin species would increase by between 49 and 100% depending on the species. Furthermore, our data show that, despite a generally contracting range of operation by the krill fishery in Antarctica over the past five decades, a consistently disproportionate amount of krill is being harvested within marine IBAs compared to the total area in which the fishery operates. Our results support the designation of the proposed MPA network and offer additional guidance as to where decision-makers should act before further perturbation occurs in the Antarctic marine ecosystem. |
topic |
marine protected area fisheries Spheniscidae Pygoscelis Aptenodytes CCAMLR |
url |
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.602972/full |
work_keys_str_mv |
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doaj-990ebeae0d30407d99ea1684aa691c392021-01-20T17:07:13ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Marine Science2296-77452021-01-01710.3389/fmars.2020.602972602972Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation ActionJonathan Handley0Marie-Morgane Rouyer1Elizabeth J. Pearmain2Victoria Warwick-Evans3Katharina Teschke4Katharina Teschke5Jefferson T. Hinke6Heather Lynch7Heather Lynch8Louise Emmerson9Colin Southwell10Gary Griffith11César A. Cárdenas12Aldina M. A. Franco13Phil Trathan14Maria P. Dias15Maria P. Dias16BirdLife International, Cambridge, United KingdomSSchool of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United KingdomBirdLife International, Cambridge, United KingdomBritish Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, United KingdomAlfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, GermanyHelmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University Oldenburg (HIFMB), Oldenburg, GermanyAntarctic Ecosystem Research Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, La Jolla, CA, United StatesDepartment of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United StatesInstitute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United StatesAustralian Antarctic Division, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Kingston, TAS, AustraliaAustralian Antarctic Division, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Kingston, TAS, Australia0Norsk Polarinstitutt/Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway1Departamento Científico, Instituto Antártico Chileno, Punta Arenas, ChileSSchool of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United KingdomBritish Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, United KingdomBirdLife International, Cambridge, United Kingdom2MARE – Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisbon, PortugalGlobal targets for area-based conservation and management must move beyond threshold-based targets alone and must account for the quality of such areas. In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, a region where key biodiversity faces unprecedented risks from climate change and where there is a growing demand to extract resources, a number of marine areas have been afforded enhanced conservation or management measures through two adopted marine protected areas (MPAs). However, evidence suggests that additional high quality areas could benefit from a proposed network of MPAs. Penguins offer a particular opportunity to identify high quality areas because these birds, as highly visible central-place foragers, are considered indicator species whose populations reflect the state of the surrounding marine environment. We compiled a comprehensive dataset of the location of penguin colonies and their associated abundance estimates in Antarctica. We then estimated the at-sea distribution of birds based on information derived from tracking data and through the application of a modified foraging radius approach with a density decay function to identify some of the most important marine areas for chick-rearing adult penguins throughout waters surrounding Antarctica following the Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) framework. Additionally, we assessed how marine IBAs overlapped with the currently adopted and proposed network of key management areas (primarily MPAs), and how the krill fishery likely overlapped with marine IBAs over the past five decades. We identified 63 marine IBAs throughout Antarctic waters and found that were the proposed MPAs to be adopted, the permanent conservation of high quality areas for penguin species would increase by between 49 and 100% depending on the species. Furthermore, our data show that, despite a generally contracting range of operation by the krill fishery in Antarctica over the past five decades, a consistently disproportionate amount of krill is being harvested within marine IBAs compared to the total area in which the fishery operates. Our results support the designation of the proposed MPA network and offer additional guidance as to where decision-makers should act before further perturbation occurs in the Antarctic marine ecosystem.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.602972/fullmarine protected areafisheriesSpheniscidaePygoscelisAptenodytesCCAMLR |