Abundance and species diversity hotspots of tracked marine predators across the North American Arctic

Abstract

Aim Climate change is altering marine ecosystems worldwide and is most pronounced in the Arctic. Economic development is increasing leading to more disturbances and pressures on Arctic wildlife. Identifying areas that support higher levels of predator abundance and biodiversity is important for the implementation of targeted conservation measures across the Arctic. Location Primarily Canadian Arctic marine waters but also parts of the United States, Greenland and Russia. Methods We compiled the largest data set of existing telemetry data for marine predators in the North American Arctic consisting of 1,283 individuals from 21 species. Data were arranged into four species groups: (a) cetaceans and pinnipeds, (b) polar bears Ursus maritimus (c) seabirds, and (d) fishes to address the following objectives: (a) to identify abundance hotspots for each species group in the summer–autumn and winter–spring; (b) to identify species diversity hotspots across all species groups and extent of overlap with exclusive economic zones; and (c) to perform a gap analysis that assesses amount of overlap between species diversity hotspots with existing protected areas. Results Abundance and species diversity hotpots during summer–autumn and winter–spring were identified in Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Amundsen Gulf, and the Beaufort, Chukchi and Bering seas both within and across species groups. Abundance and species diversity hotpots occurred within the continental slope in summer–autumn and offshore in areas of moving pack ice in winter–spring. Gap analysis revealed that the current level of conservation protection that overlaps species diversity hotspots is low covering only 5% (77,498 km2) in summer–autumn and 7% (83,202 km2) in winter–spring. Main conclusions We identified several areas of potential importance for Arctic marine predators that could provide policymakers with a starting point for conservation measures given the multitude of threats facing the Arctic. These results are relevant to multilevel and multinational governance to protect this vulnerable ecosystem in our rapidly changing world.

Climate change could overturn bird migration: Transarctic flights and high-latitude residency in a sea ice free Arctic

“…With sea ice melt, the Arctic will be more and more exposed to human pressures such as gas/oil extraction, fisheries, marine traffic or tourism. Detailed ecological knowledge is therefore essential for the design of adaptive conservation strategies, within advanced marine spatial planning 45,89,90 . Marine Protected Areas (see http://www.mpatlas.org/ for detailed maps) already exist in the Arctic, but are lacking in some key areas such as the Bering Sea or along the Northern Canadian coast.…”

Marine hotspots of activity inform protection of a threatened community of pelagic species in a large oceanic jurisdiction

“…These hotspots occurred primarily around breeding islands and submarine geographical features and covered only 25% of the EEZ, which should be considered of extraordinary value for marine conservation. Identifying hotspots is thus an effective approach to minimize the area required for protection and thus reduce the opportunity cost resulting from the protection of these areas of outstanding biodiversity value (Queiroz et al, 2016;Sussman et al, 2019;Yurkowski et al, 2019).…”

“…To identify statistically significant clusters of cells with relatively high intensity of use by the study species within the Tristan EEZ, we used an indicator of spatial association, the Getis-Ord G i * (Anselin, 1995;Getis & Ord, 1992), which is a robust approach that has recently been used to identify other marine hotspots (Kuletz et al, 2015;Queiroz et al, 2016;Sussman et al, 2019;Yurkowski et al, 2019). This statistic compares the intensity of use of a given cell with the value of each adjacent cell within a given fixed radiusthe cells in this radius are referred to as the spatial neighbourhood.…”

Migratory movements of Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica naumanni from high Arctic Greenland

“…Female and male puffins from northwest Greenland showed distinct differences in overlap with the winter ranges of North American and European puffin populations. Male puffins from northwest Greenland spent October through December just to the north of puffins from Iceland, occupying an area near southwest Greenland, a known seabird hotspot [63][64][65][66] (Figs 1 and 2). With the exception of some minor overlap, Greenland male puffins generally remained north of areas where Icelandic puffins congregated and did not share the same area based on our location data (Fig 4).…”