Shearwater Foraging in the Southern Ocean: The Roles of Prey Availability and Winds

• Main Authors: Ben Raymond, Scott A. Shaffer, Serguei Sokolov, Eric J. Woehler, Daniel P. Costa, Luke Einoder, Mark Hindell, Graham Hosie, Matt Pinkerton, Paul M. Sagar, Darren Scott, Adam Smith, David R, Caitlin Vertigan, Henri Weimerskirch
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; New Zealand; Southern Ocean; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.354.3917

Background: Sooty (Puffinus griseus) and short-tailed (P. tenuirostris) shearwaters are abundant seabirds that range widely across global oceans. Understanding the foraging ecology of these species in the Southern Ocean is important for monitoring and ecosystem conservation and management. Methodology/Principal Findings: Tracking data from sooty and short-tailed shearwaters from three regions of New Zealand and Australia were combined with at-sea observations of shearwaters in the Southern Ocean, physical oceanography, nearsurface copepod distributions, pelagic trawl data, and synoptic near-surface winds. Shearwaters from all three regions foraged in the Polar Front zone, and showed particular overlap in the region around 140uE. Short-tailed shearwaters from South Australia also foraged in Antarctic waters south of the Polar Front. The spatial distribution of shearwater foraging effort in the Polar Front zone was matched by patterns in large-scale upwelling, primary production, and abundances of