South Africa is currently proclaiming a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of its sub-Antarctic Prince Edward Islands. The objectives of the MPA are to: 1) contribute to a national and global representative system of MPAs, 2) serve as a scientific reference point to inform future management, 3) contribute to the recovery of the Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides), and 4) reduce the bird bycatch of the toothfish fishery, particularly of albatrosses and petrels. This study employs systematic conservation planning methods to delineate a MPA within the EEZ that will conserve biodiversity patterns and processes within sensible management boundaries, while minimizing conflict with the legal toothfish fishery. After collating all available distributional data on species, benthic habitats and ecosystem processes, we used C-Plan software to delineate a MPA with three management zones: four IUCN Category Ia reserves (13% of EEZ); two Conservation Zones (21% of EEZ); and three Category IV reserves (remainder of EEZ). Compromises between conservation target achievement and the area required by the MPA are apparent in the final reserve design. The proposed MPA boundaries are expected to change over time as new data become available and as impacts of climate change become more evident.
Aim:The distribution of marine predators is driven by the distribution and abundance of their prey; areas preferred by multiple marine predator species should therefore indicate areas of ecological significance. The Southern Ocean supports large populations of seabirds and marine mammals and is undergoing rapid environmental change.The management and conservation of these predators and their environment relies on understanding their distribution and its link with the biophysical environment, as the latter determines the distribution and abundance of prey. We addressed this issue using tracking data from 14 species of marine predators to identify important habitat.Location: Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean. Methods:We used tracking data from 538 tag deployments made over a decade at the Subantarctic Prince Edward Islands. For each real track, we simulated a set of pseudo-tracks that allowed a presence-availability habitat modelling approach that estimates an animal's habitat preference. Using model ensembles of boosted regression trees and random forests, we modelled these tracks as a response to a set of 17 environmental variables. We combined the resulting species-specific models to evaluate areas of mean importance. | METHODSThe Prince Edward Islands (46.9°S, 37.7°E) are situated in the southwest Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean (Figure 1). The Results: Real tracking locations covered 39.75 million km 2 , up to 7,813 km from the Prince Edward Islands. Areas of high mean importance were located broadly from the Subtropical Zone to the Polar Frontal Zone in summer and from the Subantarctic to Antarctic Zones in winter. Areas of high mean importance were best predicted by factors including wind speed, sea surface temperature, depth and current speed. Main conclusions:The models and predictions developed here identify important habitat of marine predators around the Prince Edward Islands and can support the largescale conservation and management of Subantarctic ecosystems and the marine predators they sustain. The results also form the basis of future efforts to predict the consequences of environmental change. K E Y W O R D Sareas of ecological
The potential effects of ocean warming on marine predators are largely unknown, though the impact on the distribution of prey in vertical space may have far reaching impacts on diving predators such as southern elephant seals. We used data from satellite-tracked southern elephant seals from Marion Island to investigate the relationship between their dive characteristics (dive depths, dive durations and time-at-depth index values) and environmental variables (temperature at depth, depth of maximum temperature below 100 m, frontal zone and bathymetry) as well as other demographic and behavioural variables (migration stage, age-class, track day and vertical diel strategy). While other variables, such as bathymetry and vertical diel strategy also influenced dive depth, our results consistently indicated a significant influence of temperature at depth on dive depths. This relationship was positive for all groups of animals, indicating that seals dived to deeper depths when foraging in warmer waters. Female seals adjusted their dive depths proportionally more than males in warmer water. Dive durations were also influenced by temperature at depth, though to a lesser extent. Results from time-at-depth indices showed that both male and female seals spent less time at targeted dive depths in warmer water, and were presumably less successful foragers when diving in warmer water. Continued warming of the Southern Ocean may result in the distribution of prey for southern elephant seals shifting either poleward and/or to increasing depths. Marion Island elephant seals are expected to adapt their ranging and diving behaviour accordingly, though such changes may result in greater physiological costs associated with foraging. KEY WORDS: Climate change · Southern elephant seals · Foraging ecology · Marine mammals · Bio-logging · Marion Island Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherMar Ecol Prog Ser 441: [257][258][259][260][261][262][263][264][265][266][267][268][269][270][271][272] 2011 thereby influencing the Southern Ocean eddy field and its contribution to the poleward heat flux (Meredith & Hogg 2006). Indeed, hydrographic data collected north of the Prince Edward Islands for the period 1959 to 1999 indicate a positive trend in the southward migration of the Subantarctic Front (SAF) (Pakhomov & Chown 2003, Ansorge et al. 2009). The most rapid warming appears to be concentrated along the Subantarctic Belt (Le Roux & McGeoch 2008) and at the SAF (Gille 2002). Such changes in water temperature are causing complex changes in marine ecosystems across the world, notably changes in species' geographic distributions accompanied by simultaneous changes in vertical distribution (Perry et al. 2005, Dulvy et al. 2008, Nye et al. 2009). The effects of such climate changes on marine mammals may be direct (e.g. through loss of habitat from seaice breakup, Ferguson et al. 2005), or indirect (e.g. through changes in prey availability and distribution, susceptibility to diseases etc., Learmon...
Hemisphere could be detrimental to subsequent killer whale studies, because unsubstantiated characteristics may be assumed as a result of such classification. On this basis, we also recommend that ecotypic status classification for Southern Ocean killer whale morphotypes be reserved until more evidence-based ecological and taxonomic data are obtained.
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