Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting
The population of the Endangered African penguin Spheniscus demersus has decreased by > 65% in the last 20 years. A major driver of this decrease has been the reduced availability of their principal prey, sardine Sardinops sagax and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus. To date, conservation efforts to...
Published in: | Scientific Reports |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9177839/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12969-w |
id |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9177839 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9177839 2023-05-15T15:44:43+02:00 Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting Carpenter-Kling, Tegan de Blocq, Andrew Hagen, Christina Harding, Craig Morris, Taryn Pichegru, Lorien Roberts, Jennifer Ryan, Peter G. Wanless, Ross M. McInnes, Alistair 2022-06-08 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9177839/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12969-w en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9177839/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12969-w © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Sci Rep Article Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12969-w 2022-06-12T00:59:19Z The population of the Endangered African penguin Spheniscus demersus has decreased by > 65% in the last 20 years. A major driver of this decrease has been the reduced availability of their principal prey, sardine Sardinops sagax and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus. To date, conservation efforts to improve prey availability have focused on spatial management strategies to reduce resource competition with purse-seine fisheries during the breeding season. However, penguins also undergo an annual catastrophic moult when they are unable to feed for several weeks. Before moulting they must accumulate sufficient energy stores to survive this critical life-history stage. Using GPS tracking data collected between 2012 and 2019, we identify important foraging areas for pre- and post-moult African penguins at three of their major colonies in South Africa: Dassen Island and Stony Point (Western Cape) and Bird Island (Eastern Cape). The foraging ranges of pre- and post-moult adult African penguins (c. 600 km from colony) was far greater than that previously observed for breeding penguins (c. 50 km from colony) and varied considerably between sites, years and pre- and post-moult stages. Despite their more extensive range during the non-breeding season, waters within 20 and 50 km of their breeding colonies were used intensively and represent important foraging areas to pre- and post-moult penguins. Furthermore, penguins in the Western Cape travelled significantly further than those in the Eastern Cape which is likely a reflection of the poor prey availability along the west coast of South Africa. Our findings identify important marine areas for pre- and post-moult African penguins and support for the expansion of fisheries-related spatio-temporal management strategies to help conserve African penguins outside the breeding season. Text Bird Island PubMed Central (PMC) Bird Island ENVELOPE(-38.060,-38.060,-54.004,-54.004) Stony Point ENVELOPE(-62.933,-62.933,-64.913,-64.913) Scientific Reports 12 1 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
PubMed Central (PMC) |
op_collection_id |
ftpubmed |
language |
English |
topic |
Article |
spellingShingle |
Article Carpenter-Kling, Tegan de Blocq, Andrew Hagen, Christina Harding, Craig Morris, Taryn Pichegru, Lorien Roberts, Jennifer Ryan, Peter G. Wanless, Ross M. McInnes, Alistair Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting |
topic_facet |
Article |
description |
The population of the Endangered African penguin Spheniscus demersus has decreased by > 65% in the last 20 years. A major driver of this decrease has been the reduced availability of their principal prey, sardine Sardinops sagax and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus. To date, conservation efforts to improve prey availability have focused on spatial management strategies to reduce resource competition with purse-seine fisheries during the breeding season. However, penguins also undergo an annual catastrophic moult when they are unable to feed for several weeks. Before moulting they must accumulate sufficient energy stores to survive this critical life-history stage. Using GPS tracking data collected between 2012 and 2019, we identify important foraging areas for pre- and post-moult African penguins at three of their major colonies in South Africa: Dassen Island and Stony Point (Western Cape) and Bird Island (Eastern Cape). The foraging ranges of pre- and post-moult adult African penguins (c. 600 km from colony) was far greater than that previously observed for breeding penguins (c. 50 km from colony) and varied considerably between sites, years and pre- and post-moult stages. Despite their more extensive range during the non-breeding season, waters within 20 and 50 km of their breeding colonies were used intensively and represent important foraging areas to pre- and post-moult penguins. Furthermore, penguins in the Western Cape travelled significantly further than those in the Eastern Cape which is likely a reflection of the poor prey availability along the west coast of South Africa. Our findings identify important marine areas for pre- and post-moult African penguins and support for the expansion of fisheries-related spatio-temporal management strategies to help conserve African penguins outside the breeding season. |
format |
Text |
author |
Carpenter-Kling, Tegan de Blocq, Andrew Hagen, Christina Harding, Craig Morris, Taryn Pichegru, Lorien Roberts, Jennifer Ryan, Peter G. Wanless, Ross M. McInnes, Alistair |
author_facet |
Carpenter-Kling, Tegan de Blocq, Andrew Hagen, Christina Harding, Craig Morris, Taryn Pichegru, Lorien Roberts, Jennifer Ryan, Peter G. Wanless, Ross M. McInnes, Alistair |
author_sort |
Carpenter-Kling, Tegan |
title |
Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting |
title_short |
Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting |
title_full |
Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting |
title_fullStr |
Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting |
title_full_unstemmed |
Important marine areas for endangered African penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting |
title_sort |
important marine areas for endangered african penguins before and after the crucial stage of moulting |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9177839/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12969-w |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-38.060,-38.060,-54.004,-54.004) ENVELOPE(-62.933,-62.933,-64.913,-64.913) |
geographic |
Bird Island Stony Point |
geographic_facet |
Bird Island Stony Point |
genre |
Bird Island |
genre_facet |
Bird Island |
op_source |
Sci Rep |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9177839/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12969-w |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12969-w |
container_title |
Scientific Reports |
container_volume |
12 |
container_issue |
1 |
_version_ |
1766379099137245184 |