Abundance and estimated food consumption of seabirds in the pelagic ecosystem in the eastern Indian sector of the Southern Ocean

Abstract

Quantification of abundance and food consumption of seabirds are key to understand characteristics and ecological functions of local marine ecosystem due to their abundance and diversity in foraging areas, habitat, behavior, mobility and prey types. This study aimed to quantify seabird abundance in pelagic areas in the eastern Indian sector of the Southern Ocean (80–150°E) based on an at-sea observational study conducted during the 2018/19 austral summer season. We estimated food consumption by seabirds based on their biomass, estimated field metabolic rates, number of days spent in the areas, and diet composition. Among the five functional seabird groups (penguins, albatrosses/giant petrels, shearwaters, petrels/Charadriiformes, prions/storm-petrels), shearwaters, non-Antarctic resident, were the most dominant taxa both by abundance (15,650,000 birds) and biomass (9,332 tonnes) in the study area during the summer. Most of the prey consumed by all seabirds in the area was presumed to be Antarctic krill (55,504 tonnes) and pelagic fishes (91,695 tonnes), such as myctophids. Although the total food consumption by the seabirds during the summer (209,973 tonnes) was lower than that reported in the Antarctic neritic areas (e.g., 753,000 tonnes in the neighboring Prydz Bay region), the higher proportion of non-resident shearwaters in biomass and estimated food consumption (85%) were the characteristic of the study area. Our results highlight the characteristics of the ecological importance of the study area in which seabirds consume Antarctic krill and pelagic fishes in the upper layer of the water column, and its nutrients are easily transported by the seabirds as their subcutaneous fat or stomach oil to the outside of the areas.