Land-based predator monitoring across CCAMLR Divisions 58.4.1 and 58.4.2, East Antarctica: spatial and temporal scales, species, and parameters

Because Antarctic wildlife are important indicators of ecosystem change in the Southern Ocean (SO), CCAMLR’s ecosystem monitoring program (CEMP) focuses on a suite of krill-dependent indicator species to ensure that the harvesting of SO living resources takes account their needs. Over the coming years CCAMLR has a priority to review CEMP to improve links between ecosystem monitoring and management decisions. To help inform this review, we present a description of existing long-term land-based wildlife monitoring approaches and research plans from several national Antarctic programs across CCAMLR Divisions 58.4.1 and 58.4.2 in East Antarctica. Our review includes a description of the spatial and temporal scales of monitoring, species and response parameters studied. Additionally, this review will be useful to determine whether and where future efforts could be directed to enhance research and monitoring in this area in the context of providing data for 1) an ecosystem health-check, 2) developing spatial layers of prey consumption by krill predators for a spatial overlap analysis, and 3) providing an ecosystem assessment.