Abstract
Marine protected areas are considered important tools for protecting marine biodiversity, and animal tracking is a key way to determine if boundaries are effectively placed for protection of key marine species, including seabirds. We tracked chick-rearing brown noddies (Anous stolidus) from the Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida USA in 2016 using 1.8 g Nanofix GPS tags (n = 10), making this the first time this species has ever been tracked. We determined movement parameters, such as flight speed, distance traveled and home range, and how birds used a complex of marine protected areas including the Dry Tortugas National Park which is largely no-take (i.e., no fishing or extraction permitted), and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, of which two Ecological Reserves totaling 517.9 km2 are no-take. Birds remained largely within marine protected areas, with 91.3% of birds’ locations and 58.8% of the birds’ total home range occurring within the MPAs, and 79.2% of birds’ locations and 18.2% of the birds’ total home range within no-take areas. However areas of probable foraging, indicated by locations where birds had high-residence time, were found within one of the MPAs only 64.7% of the time, and only 6.7% of those locations were in no-take areas. Birds traveled a mean straight line distance from the colony of 37.5 km, primarily using the region to the southwest of the colony where the shelf break and Loop Current occur. High-residence-time locations were found in areas of significantly higher sea surface temperature and closer to the shelf break than low residency locations. A sea surface temperature front occurs near the shelf edge, likely indicative of where Sargassum seaweed is entrained, providing habitat for forage species. Much of this region, however, falls outside the boundaries of the marine protected areas, and brown noddies and other species breeding in the Dry Tortugas may interact with fisheries via resource competition or discard foraging. The complex of marine protected areas in the region encompasses a large portion of the overall habitat for this small seabird species, however a large portion of the key foraging habitat fell outside the boundaries of the
Highlights
Marine protected areas, fishing management zones and other place-based protective measures rely on an understanding of how animals are using management areas to determine their placement and effectiveness
We present the first ever movements of individual brown noddies, tracked from Dry Tortugas National Park (DRTO) in the Florida Keys, the only nesting colony of the brown noddy in the continental US
We further explored the relationship between movements and key environmental features in the region, including the shelf break and the Loop Current
Summary
Marine protected areas, fishing management zones and other place-based protective measures rely on an understanding of how animals are using management areas to determine their placement and effectiveness. Satellite-based tracking in particular has been a key tool for determining the effectiveness of such management measures (Maxwell et al, 2011; Hart et al, 2013; Schofield et al, 2013). Satellite tracking technology has advanced rapidly in the last several decades giving unprecedented insights into the movements of a range of terrestrial and marine species around the globe (Godley et al, 2008; Hart and Hyrenbach, 2010; Costa et al, 2012; Hazen et al, 2012; Hussey et al, 2015; Hays et al, 2016). As tags continue to be miniaturized, doors open to understanding the movements and migrations of smaller species (Hallworth and Marra, 2015; Soanes et al, 2015), allowing tracking to be applied more broadly to place-based management and conservation
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