CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Seabirds belonging to the order Procellariiformes(albatrosses and petrels) are amongst the most pelagic of seabirds and occur in all of the worlds oceans. They are, therefore, excellent potential indicators of the state of marine ecosystems, especially high seas. The status and trends of albatross breeding populations are well documented and, with 19 of 21 species now globally threatened and the remainder Near Threatened (BirdLife International 2004a); albatrosses have become the bird family most threatened with extinction. Many petrel species are also globally threatened. Although albatross and petrel species face many threats at their breeding sites, the main problems they encounter currently relate to the marine environment, particularly involving interactions with fisheries, notably the many thousands of birds killed annually by longline fishing. Many of the solutions to these problems require accurate knowledge of the distributions of albatrosses and petrels throughout their annual and life cycles. Such data are also invaluable for understanding many aspects of the ecology and demography of these species and their role in the functioning of marine systemsincluding their potential susceptibility to changes in these. In terms of remote-tracking to reveal their at-sea distribution (a key to understanding how they function in marine ecosystems), albatrosses (and giant-petrels) are the most studied of all marine species. Given the substantial potential of these data for conservation applications, including for marine analogues of terrestrial Important Bird Areas (IBAs), pioneered by BirdLife since the 1980s, BirdLife convened an evaluation workshop to explore the data and concepts with the main dataholders. This report presents the results of the workshop.

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