Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action

Abstract

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.

Juvenile emperor penguin range calls for extended conservation measures in the Southern Ocean

“…Furthermore, all studies including ours have reported that juveniles visit the highly productive ACC area during their first journey at sea, where the Antarctic Polar Front appears to act as an ecological barrier. During the most vulnerable stage of their life, the penguins' dispersive behaviour leads them outside the SO-Treaty and CCAMLR limits into waters where they are likely to encounter and compete with fisheries (see [ 29 , 51 ] for current data on fisheries activity). In addition, overlap with fisheries in the Weddell Sea region might occur in forthcoming decades and increase the threat to emperor penguins according to the projected long-term effects of climate change on krill population migration [ 24 , 52 ].…”

“…The emperor penguin is considered an iconic and ecologically important species of Antarctica. Its colony sites and at-sea movements have been the basis of previous discussions of conservation priorities, either in terms of MPAs [ 4 ], important bird areas [ 28 , 29 ] or areas of ecological significance [ 30 ]. With a population currently estimated at ca 270 000 breeding pairs in 61 known colonies around the continent [ 27 ], the species is severely threatened by global warming and expanding fishing activities in the Southern Ocean [ 15 , 31 ], facing the risk to be nearly extinct within this century [ 32 ].…”

The Use of Animal-Borne Biologging and Telemetry Data to Quantify Spatial Overlap of Wildlife with Marine Renewables

“…This could make it more difficult to reach net-zero emissions [2,3,83]. The potential for animal-borne devices to reveal areas of use and therefore potential for overlap with marine renewables is great [26,[84][85][86][87]. However, there are ethical and logistical concerns associated with tagging wild animals, as well as time and resource constraints to consider when analyzing the complex data retrieved from the devices [17,41,79].…”

“…However, there are ethical and logistical concerns associated with tagging wild animals, as well as time and resource constraints to consider when analyzing the complex data retrieved from the devices [17,41,79]. Additionally, while such data have been used in marine conservation and management previously (e.g., [26,85]), this is often at a scale (i.e., ocean-basin) less immediately relevant to developers and stakeholders in marine renewables. In order to facilitate its use within the assessment of risk to animals from marine renewable energy, we developed an analysis workflow ( Figure 2) and applied it to archival biologging and telemetry data for six European shags within a major tidal development area.…”

The foraging behavior of nonbreeding Adélie penguins in the western Antarctic Peninsula during the breeding season

“…The analysis of tracking data from Southern Ocean seabirds, and penguins in particular, has been widely used to define important areas for marine conservation in Antarctic waters. Many of these studies have focused exclusively on birds incubating or provisioning chicks, an energetically demanding period when nest duties restrict the foraging ranges of breeding adults (Dias et al, 2018; Handley et al, 2021; Warwick‐Evans et al, 2018). During other life‐history stages birds may have larger foraging distributions with very different spatial overlaps between conspecifics, including breeding animals from adjacent or distant colonies, other marine predators and potential threats, such as fisheries.…”