Seabirds as indicators of the marine environment

Abstract Parsons, M., Mitchell, I., Butler, A., Ratcliffe, N., Frederiksen, M., Foster, S., and Reid, J. B. 2008. Seabirds as indicators of the marine environment. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 1520–1526. We report on the development of seabird indicators that support the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy. The application of high-quality monitoring data on breeding abundance and productivity in Scotland was explored in three ways: as indicators of seabird status in its own right, as indicators of the “health” of the marine environment, and as indicators of the food supply of vertebrate predators. Data on breeding productivity of seabirds, which responds more immediately to environmental variation than adult abundance, provided a novel supplement to indicators based solely on abundance trends. Grouping of species according to ecological guilds provided indicators of change in particular aspects of the marine environment. The role of seabird indicators in relation to policy frameworks is discussed, with a look to further developments at the UK and regional scales.