Workshops on seabird-fisheries competition

The Farallon Institute, in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts, hosted a set of workshops in 2015-2016 for scientists to discuss the topic “Best practices and guidelines to document effects of fisheries competition on seabirds, with an emphasis on penguins”.  

Goals of the workshops were to:

(1) review, discuss, and synthesize previous approaches and methods to study and document seabird-fisheries competition (e.g., observations/correlations, experiments, models), and

(2) train early career fisheries and seabird scientists in methods, challenges, and opportunities to document seabird-fisheries competition. 

Workshop 1 was held in Cape Town, South Africa, on October 31, 2015, and was convened by William Sydeman (Farallon Institute) and Robert Crawford (South African Department of Environmental Affairs).  A diverse group of scientists from ten countries met following attendance of the World Seabird Conference, and 15 workshop participants were early career scientists.  Morning plenary presentations were followed by afternoon break-out discussion groups to address different approaches to understanding seabird-fisheries competition.  Three groups focused on methodology (observations, models, and experiments) and listed challenges and opportunities of each approach. 

Workshop 2 was held in Seattle, Washington, on January 19, 2016, and was convened by William Sydeman and Tim Essington (University of Washington).  Eight participants of this workshop had also attended Workshop 1, and participants were early career scientists.  As in Workshop 1, following the morning presentations, afternoon break-out groups discussed different approaches to understanding seabird-fisheries competition.  The two groups focused on the conceptual models for assessing fisheries impacts on seabird food resources. 

Ultimately, these workshops were designed to support and facilitate production of a peer-reviewed publication tentatively entitled Best Practices and Guidelines to Determine and Document Seabird-Fisheries Competition, to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.