Joint OSPAR HELCOM ICES Working Group on Seabirds (JWGBIRD; outputs from 2019 meeting)

The group reviewed the national reporting of seabird status according to Article 8 MSFD by EU Member States at the NE Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. Compiled information included the use of OSPAR and HELCOM indicator outcomes, the addition of assessments from national monitoring schemes, the methods of integration and which EU Commission were followed.

To achieve more coverage of the five MSFD criteria, a proposal for an indicator for the criterion D1C5 (habitat for the species) was presented. This indicator shall compare the occurrences of e.g. shipping, offshore windfarms, aggregate extraction, bottom trawling and gillnet fishing with the spatio-temporal distribution of seabirds and assess the amount of seabird habitat lost or used to a lower degree due to disturbance from these human activities.

Further refinements of the existing indicator for breeding productivity in OSPAR were discussed. The suggested approach uses matrix population models to assess the impact of the observed level of breeding productivity on population growth rate, and relates the projected growth rate to IUCN criteria for species red-listing.

Inclusion of at-sea data in future bird assessments was further prepared by updating information on existing monitoring programmes delivering the necessary baseline data, supporting networking activity, preparing a joint data management and investigating opportunities for a pilot assessment.

JWGBIRD provided input to the multi species model SMS of the Working Group on Multispecies Assessment Methods (WGSAM), to the HELCOM workshop on migratory waterbirds in November 2018 and to the Joint OSPAR-HELCOM bycatch workshop in May 2019, the HELCOM indicator workshop and the HELCOM Sufficiency of Measures (SOM) workshop in October2019. The group revised the ICES Ecosystem Overview of the Oceanic North Atlantic, the proposed road map for ICES bycatch advice as well as the WGBYC data call.