Line of action:

Knowledge generation and management

Status:

En ejecución

Spatial scale of work:

Several Autonomous Communities.

Line of research:

Marine environment

Execution date:

2022

Duration:

04/07/2022-30/06/2025

Total budget:

€235,252.50

Amount of aid from the Biodiversity Foundation:

€223,489.88 (95%)

The general objective of this project focuses on the proposal for expansion and management measures in current and future marine SPAs in the Cantabrian Sea. The specific objectives focus on:

• Monitoring of seabird breeding populations to

evaluate their current state of conservation and propose monitoring programs

• Propose new marine SPAs or expansion of existing ones through the description of the use of the habitat by the main nesting species for which marine SPAs have been declared in the Cantabrian Sea (European shag and storm petrel).
• Identify and quantify the impact of the main threats related to fishing activity in current and future SPAs for the proposal of management measures in them, as well as make their threats known. To evaluate this impact, mortality rates would be estimated in shag and several Procellariiformes in longlines, vertical nets and sport fishing in the Cantabrian Sea for the development of conservation strategies for these species, focused on the RN2000 areas.

The results of the project will undoubtedly contribute to the advancement of knowledge of seabird conservation problems, while serving as an example for other marine SPAs in Spain, especially in terms of methodologies to address the development of optimised monitoring programmes and management plans clearly focused on conservation from a scientific point of view. In this sense, the design of realistic measures at a social and economic level, without losing effectiveness from the point of view of conservation, ensures their relevance to maintain a good environmental status. The project will contribute significantly to the Life IP INTEMARES, as it will serve to improve the management of RN2000, expanding it and increasing knowledge about the defined. In addition, it will also contribute to providing responses to the Birds and DMEM Directives, specifically to indicators required in the six-year reports and in the same way to agreements such as OSPAR