Because seabirds spend the majority of their life at sea and feed near the top of the food chain, changes in their populations are likely to reflect changes occurring in the wider marine ecosystem, making them excellent indicators of the health of the marine environment. However, fisheries, pollution, invasive predators, habitat destruction and human disturbance have all had significant impacts on seabird populations, making them the most threatened group of birds globally.
Images taken throughout the year at multiple locations provide the ability to answer a range of interesting questions. Specifically, we aim to:
- Determine chick survival and breeding success, and how this varies across species ranges.
- Identify the causes of chick mortality (e.g. predation in the colony versus parents abandoning chicks)
- Record changes in the timing of breeding (e.g. arrival date, fledging date) and how this is affected by environmental conditions
We have many camera monitoring sites around the North Atlantic and now from the tropics also. The images in this project come from Ireland, Wales, Iceland, Svalbard, Faroes, Greenland and Mauritius so far, and you will be helping us collect really useful data from these spectacular locations!
