Abstract
Accurately locating the foraging areas of diving marine predators is central to understanding their ecology and implementing conservation and management regulations. This study compares horizontal and vertical approaches of identifying seal foraging areas. We analysed GPS locations and dive data obtained from GPS/GSM tags fitted on eight grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) and nine harbour seals (Phoca vitulina). In the horizontal dimension, we used the First Passage Time to identify Area-Restricted Search (ARS) behaviour. In the vertical dimension, we used two dive criteria indicating benthic foraging behaviour: dive shape and vertical descent speed. The two approaches were spatially compared using the Index of Differences in Spatial Pattern. We found that the two approaches highlight similar hotspots when pooling all individuals of the same species. However, the degree of overlap varied considerably at the individual level. Some individuals performed most of their likely foraging dives (vertical dimension) in areas where they also displayed ARS behaviour (horizontal dimension), while others performed these dives both in and outside ARS zones. We suggest that comparing foraging areas detected from horizontal and vertical approaches (1) can strengthen the confidence in the efficiency of approaches to accurately spatialize the actual foraging effort of a diving predator at the scale of a colony (sampled with several individuals); and (2) provides more comprehensive insights into potential interindividual differences in foraging strategies as some divergent individual strategies may not be detected using only horizontal movements.
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Data availability
GPS tracking data presented in this study are available on OBIS-SEAMAP for both species: grey seals (http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/2026) and harbour seals (http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/2030) from baie de Somme, France. GPS data are freely downloadable and are covered by a Creative Commons Licence (CC0).
Change history
05 August 2020
The author would like to correct the Fig.��4 of the published article.
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Acknowledgements
We thank participants who took part in the fieldwork and who are from La Rochelle Université (LIENSs, Observatoire PELAGIS, CEBC), the Sea Mammal Research Unit, Picardie Nature, the Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage (ONCFS), Zoo de la Flèche and Université de Liège (Belgium). We thank Carin Reisinger for proofreading the initial manuscript. We are very grateful to the two reviewers of the paper, Debbie Russell and one anonymous reviewer, for their helpful and constructive comments, edits and suggestions.
Funding
This study was funded by Région Hauts-de-France and Parc naturel marin des estuaires picards et de la mer d’Opale (Agence Française pour la Biodiversité) through the “Eco-Phoques” project (2015–2018). The telemetry data were obtained from the Baie de Somme in 2008, funded by La Compagnie du Vent, and in 2012, funded by the Région Poitou-Charentes and the Contrat de Plan Etat-Région (Poitou–Charentes). This study is part of Yann Planque’s PhD project funded by La Rochelle Université and by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.
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All procedures performed in studies involving harbour and grey seals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the French Ministry of the Environment as seals were caught and instrumented under license numbers 08/346/DEROG and 11/874/DEROG, delivered by this Ministry.
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Planque, Y., Huon, M., Caurant, F. et al. Comparing the horizontal and vertical approaches used to identify foraging areas of two diving marine predators. Mar Biol 167, 25 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-019-3636-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-019-3636-8