Irreplaceable area extends marine conservation hotspot off Tunisia: insights from GPS-tracking Scopoli’s shearwaters from the largest seabird colony in the Mediterranean

This video from Italy is called Feeding of shearwater chick “Bertina” 27 09 13.

I was privileged to see Scopoli’s shearwaters near Lesbos, Greece.

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North African Birds

Grémillet, D., Péron, C., Pons, J.-B., Ouni, R., Authier, M., Thévenet, M., & Fort, J. (2014). Irreplaceable area extends marine conservation hotspot off Tunisia: insights from GPS-tracking Scopoli’s shearwaters from the largest seabird colony in the Mediterranean. Marine Biology  doi:10.1007/s00227-014-2538-z

Abstract:

Recent meta-analyses identified conservation hotpots at the scale of the Mediterranean, yet those may be crude by lack of detailed information about the spatial ecology of the species involved. Here, we identify an irreplaceable marine area for >95 % of the world population of the Scopoli’s shearwater (Calonectris diomedea), which is endemic to the Mediterranean and breeds on the island of Zembra off Tunis. To this end, we studied the three-dimensional at-sea movements of 50 breeding adults (over a total of 94 foraging trips) in 2012 and 2013, using GPS and temperature–depth recorders. Feathers were also collected on all birds to investigate their trophic status. Despite…

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