The coastal waters of southern British Columbia, Canada, encompass habitat of international conservation significance to coastal and marine birds, including sizeable areas designated in the early 1900s as Migratory Bird Sanctuaries (MBS) to protect overwintering waterfowl from hunting near urban centres. Two of these, Shoal Harbour (SHMBS) and Victoria Harbour (VHMBS), have seen significant marine infrastructure development in recent decades and experience considerable vessel traffic. We conducted a pilot study using shore-based observers to develop small-vessel baselines for the winter months when regional waterbird numbers are highest. During our surveys, we recorded considerable inter-site variability in vessel traffic characteristics, with one site (SHMBS) a source of nearly twice as many vessels in total as the other (VHMBS). For waterbirds, hourly 3-minute 'snapshot' surveys, combined with daily tallies of incidental observations, showed that community composition also varied by locality, with one site dominated by gulls (Laridae), cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae), and seaducks (Tribe Mergini), and the other by gulls, cormorants, and alcids (Alcidae). Our results demonstrate that fine-scale local variability must be taken into account when managing for vessel traffic disturbance of waterbirds, particularly at sites of high human population density and increasing coastal development. Results are in press in PLoS ONE (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0283791).

See published manuscript for details (Blight et al. 2023. Visual surveys provide baseline data on small vessel traffic and waterbirds in a coastal protected area. PLoS ONE, e.xxxxx, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0283791).

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