Migration and foraging ecology of Greater Shearwater

Data provider
Migration and foraging ecology of Greater Shearwater
Originating data center
Satellite Tracking and Analysis Tool (STAT)

Greater Shearwater (Puffinus gravis), seabird Procellariiforme, breed on Tristan da Cunha island group, remote islands midway between South Africa and South America. They complete an extensive transatlantic migration each year to reach the Northern hemisphere. They spend their wintering/staging period in productive waters such as Gulf of Maine, Georges and Grand Banks, Bay of Fundy, Greenland and Europe. While still abundant, the location of the entire world’s population on a single island group makes these birds susceptible to environmental changes.

We will be following 22 greater (or great) shearwaters equipped with Satellite tags from Gough island/ Inaccessible island (United Kingdom) to the Northern Atlantic from October 2009 to October 2010.
Our first objective is tracking pre-laying exodus and foraging trips during incubation/ rearing period; second objective: identifying migration paths and finally, understanding foraging movements of these birds over the Northwest Atlantic until molt period.

Greater shearwaters have been observed feeding over tuna school during ship surveys since they share same prey type; subsequently, we will overlay shearwater tracks and tunas distribution to search for evidence of spatial co-occurrence between these 2 top predators to evaluate the importance of this mutual association.

This project is a collaboration between Dr Rob Ronconi (University of Dalhousie/ Halifax/ Canada), Marie C Martin and Dr Richard R. Veit (College of Staten Island/ City University of New York/ USA) supported by US Wildlife Fisheries Service, as well as David and Lucile Packard Grant (Birdlife International / Agreement for Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels). Technical logistic and field work has been made possible with the support of Dr Peter Ryan, Dr Rob Ronconi,and Sirtrack Ltd.

For further information, please contact Marie C Martin
entrecasteaux@hotmail.com or Dr Rob Ronconi: rronconi@dal.ca

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Visit STAT's project page for additional information.

Overview

This section explains attributes included in the original dataset. OBIS-SEAMAP restricts the attributes available to the public to date/time, lat/lon and species names/counts only. Should you need other attributes described here, you are encouraged to contact the data provider.

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downloadable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission.

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
prognum	Program number
tag_id	PTT ID
lc	Location class
iq	Quality indicator
dir1	Dir 1
nb_mes	Number of messages received
big_nb_mes	definition not provided
best_level	Best signal strength in dB
pass_duration	Pass duration in seconds
nopc	Number Of Plausibility Checks successful (from 0-4)
calcul_freq	Calculated frequency
altitude	Altitude used for location calculation
sensors	Sensors
species	Species name
project_id	STAT Project ID
lc_filter	Parameters to location filtering
speed_filter	Parameters to speed filtering
distance_filter	Parameters to distance filtering
topo_filter	Parameters to topo filtering
time_filter	Parameters to time filtering
angle_filter	Parameters to angle filtering
life_stage	Life stage of the animal
gender	Gender of the animal
wetdry	Wet or dry
wetdry_filter	Parameters to Wet or dry filterint
obs_datetime	Date and time (local time zone)
timezone_h	Time difference from UTC