Sharing the neighbourhood: assessing the impact of kelp harvest on foraging behaviour of the European shag
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Sharing the neighbourhood: assessing the impact of kelp harvest on foraging behaviour of the European shag Signe Christensen‑Dalsgaard1 · Jenny Mattisson1 · Kjell Magnus Norderhaug2 · Svein‑Håkon Lorentsen1 Received: 27 February 2020 / Accepted: 6 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Coastal kelp forest ecosystems create dynamic and productive habitats, supporting a wide range of epiphytic flora, invertebrates, fish and seabirds. Worldwide, kelp is harvested commercially, affecting kelp-associated animal communities. There is, however, limited knowledge of how fish and seabird respond to kelp harvest, highlighting the need to evaluate the ecological impact of harvest on all ecosystem levels. Using 6 years of GPS-tracking data, we examined the effects of kelp harvest on foraging behaviour of breeding European shags (Phalacrocorax aristotelis) from a colony in central Norway. We determined the spatial overlap between kelp harvest and foraging areas of shags and assessed the immediate, short- and long-term impacts of harvest on shag foraging behaviour. Our results demonstrated large spatial and temporal overlap in areas used by foraging shags and kelp harvest. We could not detect any clear alterations in the diving activity of shags due to kelp harvest. However, the broad temporal and spatial scale of our study constrained the detection of fine scale changes in shag behaviour in response to kelp harvest. Our study, nonetheless, identifies several issues that should be addressed before concluding on the effects of kelp harvest on seabird populations. This includes the need for experimental studies using directed and controlled harvest to investigate the effects of kelp harvest through the different trophic levels, including top predators. This is essential for ecosystem-based management of coastal resources, considering the many species composed in the coastal ecosystem.
Introduction Coastal marine ecosystems are ranked among the most productive ecosystems on earth, providing a range of resources to both humans and marine organisms (Costanza et al. 1997; Beaumont et al. 2008). At the same time these ecosystems Responsible Editor: V. Paiva. Reviewed by undisclosed experts. Signe Christensen-Dalsgaard and Jenny Mattisson contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-020-03739-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Signe Christensen‑Dalsgaard [email protected] 1
Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Torgarden, PO Box 5685, 7485 Trondheim, Norway
Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Nye Flødevigen vei 20, 4817 His, Norway
2
are under pressure from human activities, contributing to their degradation and loss of habitat (Airoldi and Beck 2007; Halpern et al. 2008; Crain et al. 2009; Korpinen et al. 2013). In temperate and polar coastal ecosystems kelp forests create highly productive habitats (Mann, 1973; Steneck
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