SEAFUTURE

"SEABIRDS, TUNA, CLIMATE CHANGE – FUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS IN THE TROPICAL INDIAN OCEAN AND SUSTAINABLE USE OF ITS RESOURCES"

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The world is facing strong anthropogenic impacts by climate change and intensive exploitation of its natural resources. This will inevitably have profound consequences for ecological processes. Tropical Oceans have a substantial ecological significance but there is only little knowledge on their functioning. This knowledge, however, is crucial to evaluate effects of climate change and resource exploitation on these ecosystems. In the proposed project, the fellow will investigate these issues in the tropical Indian Ocean. Specifically, the objectives are 1) to determine the functional relationships between seabird ecology, bio-physical environment, and fisheries in the tropical Indian Ocean, and 2) to apply the acquired knowledge to assess the current and predict the future impact of climate change and tuna fisheries on the biodiversity of this ecosystem. The project takes advantage of differing oceanographic conditions in the eastern and western Indian Ocean allowing a comparative analysis between several seabird species subjected to oceanographic variability in two contrasting environments. The fellow will use already available data on key parameters of the seabirds’ ecology which have been collected at various sites on both sides of the Indian Ocean over several years. He will apply a wide array of state-of-the-art statistical, modelling and laboratory methodologies to analyse and interpret the data to accomplish the aforementioned objectives. The envisaged results will be relevant to the scientific community as well as to policy makers. They will fill the gap of knowledge on the functioning of the tropical Indian Ocean and allow to evaluate and predict anthropogenic effects on this ecosystem in particular and on tropical marine ecosystems in general. Beyond that, the results shall be used as a scientific foundation to develop management and conservation strategies for a sustainable use of tuna stocks of the Indian Ocean and the protection of its biodiversity.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Tropical oceans are a major biome and of significant socio-economic importance. In-depth research, like that of a recent EU-funded project, is crucial for evaluating the effects of climate change and resource exploitation on tropical ocean ecosystems.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The SEAFUTURE project set out to determine the functional relationships between sea bird ecology, the biophysical environment and fisheries in the tropical Indian Ocean. To accomplish its objective, Fregatidae and Sulidae sea birds were chosen to study different habitats in the tropical Indian Ocean. These habitats were coastal, in-shore and oceanic, and offshore. Multi-year data sets on sea bird ecology were used to evaluate the effect of varying oceanographic conditions.

Project results showed that different oceanographic conditions had little to no effect on the foraging behaviour of in-shore species. In contrast, however, purely offshore/oceanic foraging species showed distinct responses in their foraging behaviour to unfavourable oceanographic conditions.

When marine conditions were unfavourable, trip duration and distance increased and dives got deeper, resulting in greater fasting stints. This increases the problem of adult birds sustaining themselves and their young, which might eventually affect population size.

Another result is that rain severely affects the breeding success of all species. This is a crucial point since climate change predictions indicate that extreme weather events, like storms and cyclones, will increase in intensity, frequency and duration.

SEAFUTURE's study results have aided understanding of how tropical sea birds are affected by changing environmental conditions. This will help ecologists, demographers, and wildlife and fisheries managers to predict how sea bird populations will cope with ongoing anthropogenic changes.