{"id":10774,"date":"2021-04-15T15:44:22","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T14:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=10774"},"modified":"2021-04-15T15:44:22","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T14:44:22","slug":"seabirds-interact-aquaculture-fisheries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/seabirds-interact-aquaculture-fisheries\/10774\/","title":{"rendered":"How do seabirds interact with aquaculture and fisheries?"},"content":{"rendered":"
The exploitation of fishing resources is a constant threat to the future of many seabirds whose populations are falling worldwide. In the Mediterranean alone, accidental bird bycatches affect nearly 5,000 specimens per year.<\/p>\n
The AMARYPESCA project<\/a> centres around evaluating the interactions between seabirds and human activities that concern marine areas within the Spanish Network of Marine Protected Areas (RAMPE).<\/p>\n The study includes the setting of geolocators (GPS) to seabirds and fishing boats that volunteer, apart from the vessel monitoring system, to see the positioning of the operational fishing fleet in the Canary Islands and the peninsular Levantine (in collaboration with the Spanish Institute of Oceanography). A new algorithm has allowed the integration of the time and space dataset to predict how and when the birds interact with the fishing fleet and fish farms<\/a>.<\/p>\n The researchers observed various populations of bird such as Scopoli\u2019s shearwater, European Storm petrel and the yellow-legged gull.<\/p>\n Most of the interactions of the cormorants and Scopoli\u2019s shearwater with fishing fleet occurred within the RAMPE areas, largely in trawler, encircling and artisanal fishing that work close to the coasts and provide food to the seabirds daily through the discards.<\/p>\n \u201cRAMPE areas cover a great part of the waters that surround the breeding colonies of the studied populations. This could be particularly important in species with a low mobility during the breeding season, such as the Audonin\u2019s gull, the European shag and the Cormorant\u201d, notes Professor Jacob Gonz\u00e1lez-Sol\u00eds, head of the Seabird Ecology Group of the UB-IRBio.<\/p>\n