Albatross and petrel overlap with pelagic longline fisheries in the Eastern Pacific Ocean

This study quantified spatial overlap between seabirds and industrial and small-scale coastal longline fisheries in the eastern Pacific Ocean, as well as overlap between seabird utilization distributions and areas where seabird bycatch mitigation is mandated by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC). Species with the highest overlap with fisheries, a proxy for bycatch risk, included non-breeding adult black (Procellaria parkinsoni) and white-chinned petrels (P. aequinoctialis), Chatham (Thalassarche eremita), Buller’s (T. bulleri), Antipodean (Diomedea antipodensis antipodensis), and Salvin’s (T. salvini) albatrosses, and breeding waved albatrosses (Phoebastria irrorata). The IATTC mitigation area appeared to encompass most core habitat in the eastern Pacific for the seabird species considered, with the notable exception of foraging black petrels, which largely occurred outside this area.