However, the initial status of cetacean and seabird communities across European waters is often poorly understood.
The emerging development of offshore wind energy has raised public concern over its impact on seabird communities.
Among fishing regions, the Indian and Southern Ocean seabird communities had the most similar seabird composition, sharing 17 species.
On a local scale, environmental factors such as surface productivity, air temperature, and winds were not consistently related to seabird distributions and community dynamics.
The authors thank the marine mammal, seabird, and sea turtle community, including SEAMAP data collectors, providers, collaborators, and users for supporting the OBIS-SEAMAP project.
Results from the gap analysis can also provide direct feedback to the management agencies and marine mammal, seabird, and sea turtle communities on planning future research, should gaps in space and time remain after searching within available literature and databases.
Seabird tourism can provide income for coastal communities as well as raise the profile of seabird conservation.
The designation would protect federal waters along the Aleutians, extensive seabird and marine mammal habitat, unique cold-water coral communities, and critical habitat for a number of endangered marine mammal species, including the critically endangered North Pacific Right Whale.
Making these observations and analysis tools available to the global research community will facilitate improved ecological understanding of marine mammals, seabirds, and sea turtles as well as inform the management and conservation of these species.
Based on current SEAMAP data holdings, non-US groups are an important target community for filling gaps for specific taxa (i.e., seabirds) and regions.
