Seabirds around fishing vessels

Arctic skua

Stercorarius parasiticus

The Arctic skua breeds in the Northern Hemisphere but is a regular visitor to New Zealand waters during summer. It can be confused with the pomarine skua, which is also an occasional summer visitor to New Zealand from the Northern Hemisphere.

Stercorarius parasiticus
CC-BY, Dragonfly Science

Mean number of arctic skua 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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