PSG 2012 Hawaii abstracts - Pacific Seabird Group

ehaviors and associations, diet, dive depths) of the world’s seabirds. A recent attempt to apply these
protocols to seabirds breeding on the French administered Îles Éparses (The Scattered Islands), western
Indian Ocean, revealed several life history characteristics of tropical seabirds that present challenges to
implementing these protocols. In particular, the relaxed breeding (e.g. bi-annual, year
round/opportunistic) and subsurface facilitated foraging behaviors of many tropical seabirds create unique
challenges when attempting to identify and delineate important marine areas for protection. Recent
advances in tagging technology have produced high quality data for some species, but rarely cover more
than a couple of seasons and have seldom been overlaid with high quality movement data of subsurface
predators in order to identify key foraging areas. Multi-season tracking efforts, tracking of smaller species
and the integration of data on seasonal and localized movements of subsurface predators will help to
address these knowledge gaps. However, the designation and protection of important marine habitats and
areas for tropical seabirds may require managers to develop different protection criteria than those
commonly employed for temperate species.
DEEP DIVING DOVEKIES IN THE WARMING GREENLAND SEA
Nina Karnovsky* 1 , Zachary Brown 2 , Jorg Welcker 3 , Ann Harding 4 , Wojciech Walkusz 5 , David Grémillet 6 ,
Alexander Kitaysky 7 , 1 Pomona College, Dept. of Biology, 175 W. 6 th St. Claremont, CA 91711,
nina.karnovsky@pomona.edu; 2 Stanford University, Department of Environmental Earth System Science,
Stanford, CA 94305, USA; 3 Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromso, Norway; 4 Alaska Pacific University,
Environmental Science Department, Anchorage, Alaska, 99508, USA; 5 Institute of Oceanology, PAS,
Marine Ecology Department, Sopot, Poland; 6 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEFE, F-
34293 Montpellier, Cedex 5, France; 7 Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Biology and Wildlife,
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA
The Atlantic sector of the Arctic is undergoing widespread climate change with increases in air and sea
temperatures which impact the timing of ice retreat, snow melt and the development of the marine food
web. We hypothesized that in the Greenland Sea, dovekies (Alle alle) breeding adjacent to water masses
with smaller, less energy-rich prey, work harder to find food and have higher stress levels. We tested this
hypothesis by attaching time-depth recorders to provisioning dovekies at three colonies adjacent to
different water masses (the West Spitsbergen Current with the smallest prey, the East Greenland Current
with the most lipid rich prey, and the Sorkapp Current which has a medium sized copepod). We
determined the length of time dovekies at different colonies spent at-sea collecting food for themselves
and their chicks. We also measured circulating corticosteroid hormone levels in their blood to assess
stress levels. We collected chick meals to determine the energetic content of prey fed chicks at the
different colonies. We found that dovekies are sensitive to the quality of prey available to them. Dovekies
exposed to less profitable prey made longer foraging trips and worked harder while at-sea to collect prey
for themselves and their chicks. We use this inter-colony comparison of dovekie foraging behavior as a
model to understand how continued warming in the Greenland Sea may influence this species. Future
declines in dovekies may impact terrestrial Arctic food webs which are highly influenced by the annual
input of nitrogen-rich dovekie guano on the tundra.