Sooty Shearwater Atlantic migration

A project of Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station in conjunction with the partners and sponsors detailed below.

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Introduction

Sooty Shearwaters are one of the most abundant seabird species in the world and they are distributed in nearly every ocean on the planet. Their annual migration takes them tens of thousands of kilometers in a round trip between their breeding colonies and their winter feeding grounds.

The Sooty’s largest breeding colonies are located in the South Pacific Ocean on islands around New Zealand and Chile where millions of birds nest. Some smaller colonies of Sooty Shearwaters are found in the South Atlantic, primarily on the Falkland Islands and also in small numbers on the Tristan da Cunha archipelago. Very little is known about the marine habitat and migrations of Sooty Shearwaters in the Atlantic Ocean.



For the past three years, a team of researchers in Atlantic Canada have been studying the diet and habitat use of Greater and Sooty Shearwaters in the Bay of Fundy. In the Bay of Fundy, with the largest tides in the world, tidal currents produce upwelling areas that concentrate prey (mostly herring and krill) for seabirds and marine mammals to feed on.

The goals of this project are:

1) To discover marine wildlife hotspots in the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine where shearwaters and other animals aggregate to forage.

2) Study the diet of shearwaters foraging at tidal upwellings in the Bay of Fundy.

3) Investigate the importance of upwellings as staging areas for shearwaters to gain energy for their long distance migration.

4) Track the long-distance migration of shearwaters to their breeding grounds.

A pilot study in 2006 tracked the migrations of Greater Shearwater for the first time ever (see “Tracking Greater Shearwaters” in the Archived Projects of www.seaturtle.org/tracking). In 2007 our study is the first tracking documentation of Sooty Shearwater migrations in the Atlantic.

This project is being conducted by the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station (GMWSRS). Established in 1981, the GMWSRS has been active with research, education and conservation around Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy.

Project Partners

This project was made possible by collaboration among researchers from the following institutions:

Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station

University of Victoria

University of North Carolina Wilmington

Dalhousie University

Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre

Project Sponsors

Funding for the project was provided by:

New Brunswick Wildlife Trust Fund

James L. Baillie Memorial Fund for Bird Research and Preservation