Article
Migratory shearwaters integrate oceanic resources across the Pacific Ocean in an endless summer.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
(2006)
Abstract
Electronic tracking tags have revolutionized our understanding of broad-scale movements and habitat use of highly mobile marine animals, but a large gap in our knowledge still remains for a wide range of small species. Here, we report the extraordinary transequatorial postbreeding migrations of a small seabird, the sooty shearwater, obtained with miniature archival tags that log data for estimating position, dive depth, and ambient temperature. Tracks (262 ± 23 days) reveal that shearwaters fly across the entire Pacific Ocean in a figure-eight pattern while traveling 64,037 ± 9,779 km roundtrip, the longest animal migration ever recorded electronically. Each shearwater made a prolonged stopover in one of three discrete regions off Japan, Alaska, or California before returning to New Zealand through a relatively narrow corridor in the central Pacific Ocean. Transit rates as high as 910 ± 186 km·day-1 were recorded, and shearwaters accessed prey resources in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere's most productive waters from the surface to 68.2 m depth. Our results indicate that sooty shearwaters integrate oceanic resources throughout the Pacific Basin on a yearly scale. Sooty shearwater populations today are declining, and because they operate on a global scale, they may serve as an important indicator of climate change and ocean health.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2006
Publisher Statement
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Citation Information
Scott A Shaffer, Y Tremblay, H Weimerskirch, D Scott, et al.. "Migratory shearwaters integrate oceanic resources across the Pacific Ocean in an endless summer." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA Vol. 103 (2006) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/scott_shaffer/25/