Seabirds as indicators of marine ecosystems

Abstract

A key requirement for implementing ecosystembased management is to obtain timely information on significant fluctuations in the ecosystem (Botsford et al. 1997). However, obtaining all necessary information about physical and biological changes at appropriate temporal and spatial scales is a daunting task. Intuitively, one might assume that physical data are more important for the interpretation of ecosystem changes than biological data, but analyses of time series data suggest otherwise: physical data are more erratic and often confusing over the short term compared to biological data, which tend to fluctuate less on annual time scales (Hare & Mantua 2000). Even so, biological time-series may also be confusing when coexisting marine species respond differently to ecosystem variability.