1) Identifying at sea distribution and foraging habitat selection of Galápagos Petrels – Using GPS tracking of breeding adults, ESP-UNIMI will determine the marine areas in which Galápagos Petrels is distributed (i.e. sites used for foraging, sitting on the sea surface, and travelling). Patterns of habitat selection for specific environmental and oceanographic features will be assessed upon performing a behavioural characterization of movement data using clustering algorithms (e.g. EMBc)
2) Identifying Marine Important Conservation Areas (ICAs) and threats at sea - Colonial seabirds tend to have colony-specific segregated foraging areas, which generates spatial heterogeneity in the habitat use. ESP-UNIMI will follow the methodology proposed by Morinay et al. (2022) to obtain the areas that most of the population uses, being defined as the most important (ICAs). ESP-UNIMI will thus use Global Fishing Watch, an open-source data provider regarding commercial fishing activities, to determine the degree of overlap between fisheries, the at sea distribution of the Galápagos Petrel, and the ICAs. This will enable the identification of areas with frequent interaction with fishing vessels, times of the year in which interactions occur most frequently, differences in the interactions between populations from different Islands, and differences in interactions depending on the type of fishing activity
2) Identifying Marine Important Conservation Areas (ICAs) and threats at sea - Colonial seabirds tend to have colony-specific segregated foraging areas, which generates spatial heterogeneity in the habitat use. ESP-UNIMI will follow the methodology proposed by Morinay et al. (2022) to obtain the areas that most of the population uses, being defined as the most important (ICAs). ESP-UNIMI will thus use Global Fishing Watch, an open-source data provider regarding commercial fishing activities, to determine the degree of overlap between fisheries, the at sea distribution of the Galápagos Petrel, and the ICAs. This will enable the identification of areas with frequent interaction with fishing vessels, times of the year in which interactions occur most frequently, differences in the interactions between populations from different Islands, and differences in interactions depending on the type of fishing activity