Supplementary material from "Timing of ice retreat alters seabird abundances and distributions in the southeast Bering Sea"

• Main Authors: Renner, Martin, Salo, Sigrid, Eisner, Lisa B., Ressler, Patrick, Ladd, Carol, Kuletz, Kathy J., Santora, Jarrod A., Piatt, John F., Drew, Gary S., Hunt, George L.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Figshare 2016
• Subjects: Ecology; FOS Biological sciences; Bering Sea; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3464553.v1; https://figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Timing_of_ice_retreat_alters_seabird_abundances_and_distributions_in_the_southeast_Bering_Sea_/3464553/1

Timing of spring sea-ice retreat shapes the southeast Bering Sea food web. We compared summer seabird densities and average bathymetry depth-distributions between years with early (typically warm) and late (typically cold) ice-retreat. Averaged over all seabird species, densities in early-ice-retreat-years were 10.1% (95%CI: 1.1–47.9%) of that in late-ice-retreat-years. In early-ice-retreat-years, surface-foraging species had increased numbers over the middle shelf (50–150 m) and reduced numbers over the shelf slope (200–500 m). Pursuit-diving seabirds showed a less clear trend. Euphausiids and the copepod Calanus marshallae/glacialis were 2.4 and 18.1 times less abundant in early-ice-retreat-years, respectively, whereas age-0 walleye pollock Gadus chalcogrammus near-surface densities were 51× higher in early-ice-retreat-years. Our results suggest a mechanistic understanding of how present and future changes in sea-ice-retreat timing may affect top predators like seabirds in the southeastern Bering Sea.