Top Predators in Marine Ecosystems: Their Role in Monitoring and Management

1. Introduction
2. Effects of fisheries on ecosystems: just another top predator?
3. Physical forcing in the southwest Atlantic: ecosystem control
4. The use of biologically meaningful oceanographic indices to separate the effects of climate and fisheries on seabird breeding success
5. Linking predator foraging behaviour and diet with variability in continental shelf ecosystems: grey seals of eastern Canada
6. Distribution and foraging interactions of seabirds and marine mammals in the North Sea: multispecies foraging assemblages and habitat-specific feeding strategies
7. Spatial and temporal variation in the diets of polar bears across the CanadianArctic: indicators of changes in prey populations and environment
8. Biophysical influences on seabird trophic assessments
9. Consequences of prey distribution for the foraging behaviour of top predators
10. Identifying drivers of change: did fisheries play a role in the spread of North Atlantic fulmars?
11. Monitoring predator–prey interactions using multiple predator species: the South Georgia experience
12. Impacts of oceanography on the foraging dynamics of seabirds in the North Sea
13. Foraging energetics of North Sea birds confronted with fluctuating prey availability
14. How many fish should we leave in the sea for seabirds and marine mammals?
15. Does the prohibition of industrial fishing for sandeels have any impact on local gadoid populations?
16. Use of gannets to monitor prey availability in the northeast Atlantic Ocean: colony size, diet and foraging behaviour
17. Population dynamics of Antarctic krillEuphausia superbaat South Georgia: sampling with predators provides new insights
18. The functional response of generalist predators and its implications for the monitoring of marine ecosystems
19. The method of multiple hypotheses and the decline of Steller sea lions in western Alaska
20. Modelling the behaviour of individuals and groups of animals foraging in heterogeneous environments
21. The Scenario Barents Sea study: a case of minimal realistic modelling to compare management strategies for marine ecosystems
22. Setting management goals using information from predators
23. Marine reserves and higher predators
24. Marine management: can objectives be set for marine top predators?

The sustainable exploitation of the marine environment depends upon our capacity to develop systems of management with predictable outcomes. Unfortunately, marine ecosystems are highly dynamic and this property could conflict with the objective of sustainable exploitation. This book investigates the theory that the population and behavioural dynamics of predators at the upper end of marine food chains can be used to assist with management. Since these species integrate the dynamics of marine ecosystems across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, they offer new sources of information that can be formally used in setting management objectives. This book examines the current advances in the understanding of the ecology of marine predators and will investigate how information from these species could be used in management