Fisheries & Aquaculture News

Seabirds Face the Threat of Starvation from Industrial Fishing

Seabirds all over the world face the threat of starvation as they are outcompeted by industrial fishing practices targeting their prey, a new study published in Current Biology reports.

“Fisheries persist in starving a vanishing seabird community, like a boa tightening its grip on prey," said David Grémillet, lead author of the study and a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research. "Despite the fact that the world's seabird community is shrinking, the level of competition between seabirds and fisheries remained the same between the 1970-1980s and 1990-2000s."

To gain a better understanding of the interaction between seabirds and fisheries, the researchers mapped out where and what the seabirds were feeding on and then compared this to a database provided by the ‘sea around us’ research initiative, an organisation which assesses the impacts of fisheries on the marine environment. This allowed them to compare their own data to global maps of species that are targeted by both seabirds and fisheries.

They found that average annual fishery catches increased from 59 to 65 million metric tons between 1970–1989 and 1990–2010. Whereas, annual seabird food consumption had decreased from 70 to 57 million metric tons over the same time period. "Since the 1970s and 80s, we've lost a quarter of all penguins and nearly half of the terns and frigatebirds," said Grémillet. "Meanwhile, seabird-fishery competition continues to increase in areas such as the Asian shelves, Mediterranean Sea, Norwegian Sea, and the Californian coast."

In total, the research team analysed the feeding behaviours of one billion individuals which account for approximately 60 percent of the world’s seabird population. They noted that certain diets and external influences have contributed to the decline in seabird populations around the world.

"Those that feed on squid, Antarctic krill and small 'mid-water' fish such as herrings and sardines are suffering the most." said Deng Palomares, co-author of the study and the Sea Around Us project manager at the University of British Columbia's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.”

"On top of this, they are threatened by oil pollution, the introduction of non-native predators to their colonies, the destruction, and changes to their habitats by human activity and environmental and ecological changes caused by climate change. If we don't do anything, seabird populations are going to collapse."

Seabirds are important indicators for the marine environment because they essentially represent the top of the food chain, changes lower down the trophic levels or in their environment as a result of climate change or overexploitation of prey is likely to be manifested in their populations. Therefore, it is essential that there is improved management of the world’s fisheries to ensure that the function of the marine ecosystem is restored to healthy levels.

By Ellis Moloney

Grémillet, D., Ponchon, A., Paleczny, M., Palomares, M., Karpouzi, V., & Pauly, D. (2018). Persisting Worldwide Seabird-Fishery Competition Despite Seabird Community Decline. Current Biology. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.051

D.G. acknowledges the support of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the French Polar Institute IPEV (program 388 ADACLIM), the Belmont Forum, and the French National Research Agency ANR (TAMANI program), as well as of Jean-Christophe Auffray for the Office for Science, French Embassy in Canada.

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