Assessing potential conflicts between trawl fisheries and Magellanic penguins breeding at a marine protected area in Patagonia, Argentina

PABLO YORIO; DIEGO GONZÁLEZ ZEVALLOS; ALEJANDRO GATTO; NICOLÁS SUÁREZ; MARÍA EVA GONGORA; TATIANA KASINSKY; CRISTIAN MARINAO

Ciudad del Cabo

Conferencia; II WORLD SEABIRD CONFERENCE; 2015

Fisheries often overlap with foraging seabird distributions, and may lead to competition for common resources, incidental mortality and the provision of supplementary food in the form of discards. We assessed the interactions between trawl fisheries and Magellanic penguins breeding at the Patagonia Austral Marine Park, Golfo San Jorge, Argentina. Magellanic Penguins instrumented with GPS during the chick stage (n = 32) overlapped with operating vessels (17.9?66.2%). Stomach samples (n = 114) showed that penguins fed on at least 14 species, mostly Anchovy (Engraulis anchoita) (%M = 61.7%), followed by Squid (Illex argentinus) (21.6%) and Hake (Merluccius hubbsi) (9.5%). Stable isotope analysis (n = 120) confirmed that Anchovy was the dominant prey (70-80%) from incubation to chick fledging and molt. Trawlers targeted Hake and Argentine Red Shrimp (Pleoticus muelleri), and caught a mean of 79.5 species per year (n = 1430 hauls) of which only 19 showed FO% of over 5%. Hake was also the most frequent species in the bycatch (94%) and was dominant in over 95% of hauls. Anchovy was present in less than 14% of hauls and was rare (