Joint OSPAR/HELCOM/ICES Working Group on Seabirds (JWGBIRD; outputs from 2021 meeting)

The 2021 annual meeting of the Joint ICES/OSPAR/HELCOM Working Group on Seabirds was held as an online event from 8 to 11 November 2021. The meeting was chaired by Matt Parsons and Volker Dierschke (with Nele Markones on sick leave) and was attended by 40 members representing 17 countries. Following preceding meetings, the objectives of the meeting were to develop and implement indicators for seabirds under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), to review bird assessments within OSPAR and HELCOM, and to review and discuss seabird-related impacts of anthropogenic activities at sea. The meeting consisted of a series of interconnected workshops, where subgroups with floating membership discussed the Terms of Reference. Report chapters were drafted by Term of Reference leads and collated.

According to Descriptor 10, the MSFD requires that “Properties and quantities of marine litter do not cause harm to the coastal and marine environment”. JWGBIRD reviewed prevalence and impacts of litter ingestion, entanglement, and nest incorporation of litter in seabirds. The group provided expert opinions on information and knowledge gaps as well as proposals for best practice for future research and monitoring with respect to assessing good environmental status. A key priority, especially in relation to MSFD assessments, is quantifying the adverse effects of litter interactions on species by measuring population level effects.

The group reviewed timelines, status and demands of bird assessments within OSPAR and HELCOM, with reference to the next holistic assessments, OSPAR QSR2023 and HELCOM HOLAS 3. Both holistic assessments aimed at basing the assessment on more indicators. Consequently, JWGBIRD continued to develop new indicators such as the D1C1 bycatch indicator and D1C5 bird habitat quality indicator, and to refine existing ones, e.g. by revising the methodology of the D1C3 breeding productivity indicator as well as by including at-sea data in the D1C2 abundance indicator.

The 2021 annual meeting of JWGBIRD took place during a period in which data submission was still underway (HELCOM) or had just recently been finalised, but no evaluation results were ready yet. Thus, the group only reviewed the status of indicator development and the proposed structure of the thematic assessment that will be based on the integration of indicator assessments and other relevant information relating to status.

In addition, the group reviewed the methods for assessing and reporting confidence in OSPAR and HELCOM assessments defined by the two conventions.

Inclusion of at-sea data in future bird assessments was further supported by revitalizing the European Seabirds at Sea (ESAS) database. A dedicated project, funded as part of the Dutch WOZEP research program and carried out under the lead of INBO, collated information on existing Seabirds at Sea monitoring programmes, updated the existing ESAS data collation by new datasets from Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany and prepared migration of the database to the ICES Data Centre.

JWGBIRD supported the ICES Advisory Services by provided input on matters related to interactions between marine birds and anthropogenic activities at sea, particularly on incidental captures (bycatch) in fishing gears. Specifically, JWGBIRD supported the ICES roadmap for bycatch advice by providing additional sources of bycatch data not yet referenced in WGBYC reports. The group also reviewed the section of the WGBYC 2021 report addressing a request from NEAFC to compile and aggregate available data on bird bycatch in the NEAFC regulatory area, including the spatiotemporal distributions of the bird species vulnerable to bycatch and related information on the associated fisheries