Report of the Working Group on Seabird Ecology (WGSE)

The Working Group on Seabird Ecology met from 1 to 4 November 2011 in Machico, Madeira, Portugal, and was attended by 7 persons from five countries (Annex 1). Six were regular members of the group and one was invited by the Chair to attend. Three others participated by correspondence; these included two members and one invited to contribute by the Chair. During the meeting, WGSE addressed most terms of reference, except for (l) on “Biodiversity Indicators for assessment and manage-ment”, and we were not able to extend the completed analysis of EcoQos that we completed for OSPAR Region II (The North Sea) to the other OSPAR Regions (II and IV) due to lack of data and analysis. We were short-staffed at this meeting, with half of our usual contingent, and could barely cover the large list of tasks that was as-signed. We are exploring reasons for the low attendance this year, but note that at-tendance has steadily declined over the past few years (e.g. 17 persons in 2008). We also only very briefly summarized information on ToR (on Wet Renewable Energy), as little information is available and that which is available is capably summarized within a single published paper.