Preferred foraging areas of Heard Island albatrosses during chick raising and implications for the management of incidental mortality in fisheries
From the abstract of the referenced paper:
1. Incidental mortality in fisheries is causing declines in many albatross populations around the world. To assess potential interactions with regional fisheries satellite tags were used to track black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys) and light-mantled sooty albatrosses (Phoebetria palpebrata) breeding on Heard Island during the chick-rearing periods of 2003/2004. This was the first time individuals from either population had been tracked.
2. Black-browed albatrosses foraged largely within the Heard and McDonald Islands Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) north-east of the island, although 20% of foraging trips were to areas north of the EEZ into Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) areas 58.5.1 and 58.5.2 and into the Iles Kerguelen EEZ.
3. In contrast, the light-mantled sooty albatrosses foraged well south of Heard Island along the southern boundary of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Both species appear to face minimal risk of incidental mortality during the chick-rearing period in the regulated, legal fisheries, but are threatened by illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing vessels operating in the southern Indian Ocean.
The data have been loaded into the ARGOS database held by the Australian Antarctic Data Centre. An excel spreadsheet detailing PTT number (position tracking terminal), date of attachment, date of retrieval and species is also provided as an aide to searching the ARGOS database. Two articles are also associated with this record, a refereed journal article, plus an article in the Australian Antarctic Division's Antarctic Magazine.
The fields in this dataset are:
Species
PTT number
Date of attachment
Date of retrieval
Latitude
Longitude
Time