Editorial: tracking marine megafauna for conservation and marine spatial planning

Abstract

Despite their important role in ecosystems, the widespread and increasing threats faced by many marine megafauna taxa has led to a poor conservation status of many species (e.g., Rees et al., 2016; Dias et al., 2019; Nelms et al., 2021; Jorgensen et al., 2022). Understanding and mitigating the threats faced by marine megafauna is challenging (Lascelles et al., 2014; Reisinger et al., 2022) because both the threats and the marine environment are highly dynamic in space and time, and animals’ occurrences vary with shifts in environmental and oceanographic conditions at different scales. Additionally, these animals are often highly mobile, making it difficult to pinpoint the occurrences of different individuals in specific locations.

There are several definitions for the term ‘marine megafauna’. For example, Estes et al. (2016) define marine megafauna as species with maximum reported mass >45 kg, including 338 extant species of cetaceans, pinnipeds, sirenians, the sea otter (Enhyrda lutris), the polar bear (Ursus maritimus), the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri), marine reptiles, bony and cartilaginous fishes, cephalopods, and the giant clam (Tridacna gigas). Here, we take the view of Authier et al. (2017), who do not impose a strict body mass threshold, but consider marine megafauna to be a coherent group based on their ecological similarities (at or near the top of food webs, with no or few predators) and that share conservation issues.

This Research Topic covers a broad taxonomic representation, spanning seabirds, cetaceans, sea turtles, pinnipeds, elasmobranchs, teleosts, a sirenian, the polar bear, and a large crustacean, the red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus). Articles submitted address how biologging is being used to understand the movement behaviour and distribution of marine megafauna, and how this information can play a key role to prioritise conservation goals. The resulting 34 articles illustrate how biologging is informing conservation of marine megafauna, and in light of these studies, we discuss challenges, methodological implications and future directions for biologging in conservation.

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ORCID for Ryan R. Reisinger: orcid.org/0000-0002-8933-6875

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