Seabirds are a vital component of marine ecosystems, and monitoring their populations is essential to fulfil national and international conservation commitments. Traditionally, this monitoring has relied on direct visual observations of abundance and breeding success, often carried out by volunteers or professionals following national guidelines. However, these observations can be limited in replicability, and species that are less visible, such as those nesting in burrows or inhabiting remote locations, are often underrepresented in monitoring programmes.
In this Editor's Choice article from ICES Journal of Marine Science, Frederiksen and colleagues explore how recent technological advances can improve seabird monitoring, while also identifying the challenges associated with their implementation.
Technologies such as drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) and fixed cameras offer broad spatial coverage and detailed time-series data, respectively. Acoustic data loggers and thermal imaging are useful for tracking elusive species, while biotelemetry enables scientists to follow individual seabirds across life stages. Together, these tools offer significant potential for enhancing data collection on seabird abundance, breeding success, and survival.
However, the authors emphasize that integrating new technologies requires careful planning and a long-term implementation strategy. Mature, well-tested technologies should be prioritized in long-term monitoring programmes. Equally important is ensuring inter-calibration with existing methods, and developing the infrastructure needed to handle the large volumes of data generated—particularly in terms of data flows, storage capacity, and image processing algorithms.
The authors also highlight the importance of engaging with current fieldworkers, leveraging their expertise and encouraging continued involvement through, for example, calibration studies.
From the expansion of the renewable energy sector to emerging threats like Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), growing pressures on seabird populations make improved monitoring more crucial than ever. The adoption of new technologies will be key to understanding how seabird numbers and demographics respond to these changes, and may provide critical insights into the ecological mechanisms at play.
Read the full paper, Opportunities and challenges for new technologies in seabird population monitoring, in ICES Journal of Marine Science.
