Foraging and migratory ecology of eastern Canadian seabirds

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Recent technical advances have revolutionized our capability to investigate basic questions in animal behaviour that were previously beyond scientific scrutiny. Miniaturized data storage tags that record location using satellites, as well as temperature, pressure and light level, can be attached to free-ranging seabirds to investigate how they move throughout and use resources and habitats in the world's oceans. This proposal builds on an ecosystem research program and seeks to apply this new technology to explore the year-round foraging and migratory behaviour and ecology of eastern Canadian seabirds. Studies engage a suite of seabirds (shearwaters, auks, gannets) that span a range of body and population sizes and foraging behaviours and that feed on crustaceans, squid and fish at various depths in different ocean regions. Studies will explore how changing environmental conditions influence the seabirds' behavioural tactics and how they contend with seasonal changes. Intra- and inter-annual studies will compare the small (bay-scale foraging) and large (ocean-scale migration) scale movements and behaviour of individual seabirds. Linkages with the ecosystems in which seabirds are embedded will be maximized by integrating these studies with colony and vessel-based research. Colony studies document chick diets and success, and vessel studies map avian and fish distributions and their environmental associations, providing rationale for behaviour at sea. Habitat use and trophic interactions at the bay and ocean scales will be determined by integrating seabird movements and water temperatures in foraging locations with environmental information obtained from vessels and satellites and with biochemical analyses. Changes in foraging and migration activities will be used to evaluate how environmental conditions modulate behavioural flexibility and persistence at the individual level. This understanding is essential because these behavioural responses among socially foraging and breeding marine birds provide the mechanisms that culminate in the emergence of population patterns.