Seabird populations worldwide have declined 70% over the last 60 years, says study
PLoSONE reports, 9th June 2015: Seabird population changes are good indicators of long-term and large-scale change in marine ecosystems, and important because of their many impacts on marine ecosystems.
We [see citation below] assessed the population trend of the world’s monitored seabirds (1950–2010) by compiling a global database of seabird population size records and applying multivariate autoregressive state-space (MARSS) modelling to estimate the overall population trend of the portion of the population with sufficient data (i.e., at least five records).
This monitored population represented approximately 19% of the global seabird population. We found the monitored portion of the global seabird population to have declined overall by 69.7% between 1950 and 2010.
This declining trend may reflect the global seabird population trend, given the large and apparently representative sample. Furthermore, the largest declines were observed in families containing wide-ranging pelagicpelagic The ecological area consisting of the open sea away from the coast and the ocean bottom. The pelagic zone contains organisms such as surface seaweeds, many species of fish and sharks and some mammals, such as whales and dolphins. Pelagic animals may remain solely in the pelagic zone or may move among zones. species, suggesting that pan-global populations may be more at risk than shorter-ranging coastal populations.
Citation: Paleczny M, Hammill E, Karpouzi V, Pauly D (2015) Population Trend of the World’s Monitored Seabirds, 1950-2010. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0129342. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0129342
Source: PLoSONE, 9th June 2015. For full details of this article, see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0129342
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