The health of Northern Ireland’s marine ecosystems can affect a large number of biological, social, and commercial processes. Seabirds are an indicator of marine health thanks to their function as top predators in marine ecosystems. Britain and Ireland hold an internationally important number of seabirds, which makes monitoring those populations key to their conservation. Gathering distribution data for seabirds can help in understanding potential threats. Whilst there have been various reviews of seabird distribution, their results remain in different data repositories and other datasets are yet to be combined in a meta-analysis. In addition to seabirds, other bird species also utilise the marine environment, but have received less monitoring effort and so knowledge gaps remain.

This report was commissioned by Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) to scope the evidence available on the movements and spatial distributions of certain marine birds in and around Northern Ireland waters, in order to identify knowledge gaps. We focus on 37 marine birds found offshore, away from the coastline, that utilise the Celtic Seas (OSPAR Region III) and Ireland Exclusive Economic Zone marine environments. We compiled meta-data from 10 different sources (including directly contacting researchers, a literature review and accessing several archived datasets). Data types were grouped into 12 categories which ranged from remote tracking technologies to direct observations. The occurrence of each species within each tracking method was compiled. 

One species (Kittiwake Rissa tridactyla) was represented by 10 data types, four more were represented by nine, and six species represented by only two or three data types. Foraging hot spots were identified for nine of the 37 species, identifying a gap in understanding of foraging hot spots off the northern coast of the island of Ireland. Some 14 of the 37 species had been tracked using satellite tags, and nine tracked using GLS tags. The low proportion of species covered suggests a need for further research into tracking a wider range of marine bird species to better understand marine bird at-sea usage, further their conservation, and inform governance and policy.