Seabirds around fishing vessels

Prions

At least six species of prions can be seen in New Zealand waters, but the fairy prion is the most abundant and widely distributed. Prion species are very difficult to distinguish at sea and they are generally recorded by observers with the generic code for all prions (XPN).

Pachyptila spp.
CC-BY, Dragonfly Science

Mean number of prions recorded around fishing vessels during counts carried out by government observers, binned to 0.4 degree of longitude and latitude. The size of the circle indicates the number of observations, whereas the colour indicates the mean number of birds recorded during counts. Empty circles indicate that no birds were observed. The grey areas indicate water depths of less than 1000 m.

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