Comprehensive estimates of seabird–fishery interactions for the US Northeast and mid‐Atlantic

Abstract

1. Relatively little is known about seabird-fishery interactions (i.e. bycatch) for the U.S. Northeast and mid-Atlantic, despite concerted efforts to document observed interactions since 1989.2. Fisheries observer data were used to estimate seabird-fishery interactions for 10 species and six gear types that operated within the US Northeast and mid-Atlantic from 1996 to 2014.3. Hierarchical Bayes estimation was used and accounted for temporal, spatial, and operational considerations inherent in the data through post-stratification. 4. Over the 19-year study period, 48 821 (coefficient of variation [CV] = 0.03) seabirds were estimated to have interacted with commercial fishing gear, resulting in an average of 2570 interactions per year. 5. Trends in estimated interactions were explored using the marginal posterior distributions, with the majority of interactions pertaining to gillnets and shearwaters/fulmars. 6. Comparison with previous work highlighted the need for consistency in data preparation, making it easier to compare relative trends in seabird bycatch estimates for the region.7. Future assessments should focus on providing context for the interaction estimates, so that population-level impacts can be inferred and the necessary conservation measures enacted.

High collocation of sand lance and protected top predators: Implications for conservation and management

“…Humpbacks and shearwaters frequently use other sand habitats throughout the Northeast U.S. shelf (Payne et al, 1990; Pittman, Costa, Kot, Wiley, & Kenney, 2006; Powers, Wiley, Allyn, Welch, & Ronconi, 2017). Great shearwaters are the most frequently bycaught seabird in Northeast and mid‐Atlantic U.S. waters (Hatch, 2018), and 50% of shearwater bycatch in the GOM occurs in a small area east of Cape Cod (Hatch, Wiley, Murray, & Welch, 2016) characterized by sandy sediment and high sand lance abundance (Clark, Manning, Costa, & Desch, 2006; Staudinger et al, 2020). GOM fisheries often target species that occur in sand habitats (e.g., trap‐pot fishery for lobster or crab, Wiley et al, 2003) or feed on sand lance (e.g., currently, a gillnet fishery for spiny dogfish, and Atlantic cod, Richardson et al, 2014).…”

Birds of a Feather Eat Plastic Together: High Levels of Plastic Ingestion in Great Shearwater Adults and Juveniles Across Their Annual Migratory Cycle

“…Mass, count, and FO should be presented for each compartment of the GIT as a function of location, age, and sex given the highly variable mass, count, and FO reported between different ages and locations across time, following guidelines outlined previously for assessment of plastics in marine birds (Provencher et al, 2019). We particularly highlight the need for reporting plastic ingestion within each GIT compartment separately to facilitate increased use of bycatch samples within monitoring studies, as Great Shearwaters are the most abundantly bycaught species in the Gulf of Maine (Hatch et al, 2016;Hatch, 2018) and are also bycaught in the South Atlantic (Bugoni et al, 2008). Bycatch samples are also considered healthy prior to death and lack bias potentially associated with beach-cast samples which may have been sickly or compromised leading to death (Colabuono et al, 2009;Rodríguez et al, 2018).…”