The habitats of far-ranging large marine vertebrates (seabirds, turtles, cetaceans) and the conservation of oceanic systems

Our lab's research focuses on understanding how upper-trophic marine predators (cetaceans, turtles, seabirds) forage and migrate across patchy oceanic environments, and how these habitat associations make certain species more susceptible to anthropogenic impacts, such as bycatch. This requires an integrated approach capable of combining large-scale information on spatial / temporal variability in oceanic processes with finer-scale studies of predator habitats from tracking and vessel-based surveys. In particular, our research focuses on four aspects:

Dynamic Biogeography: What physical and biological factors structure marine communities and delineate the ranges of pelagic species? How do large-scale inter-annual variability and longer-term climatic changes affect the persistence of dynamic habitats and the structure of marine communities?

Foraging Ecology of Pelagic Predators: What physical mechanisms define predictable foraging grounds for far ranging upper-trophic predators? How do pelagic predators search for patchy prey and how does resource dispersion affect their foraging effort and reproductive success?

Marine Protected Area Design: How can we integrate knowledge of species natural histories and physical oceanography to design MPAs in marine systems? How can MPAs be designed and evaluated with respect to the target species and their habitats in a constantly shifting environment?

The Value of Marine birds and Mammals as Biological Indicators: How do top predator dispersion, diet, and demography reflect marine resource distribution and abundance? How will species distributions and community structure change in response to the warming of the global ocean?