Tracking Red-footed Booby (Sula sula)

Seabirds such as the Red-Footed Booby (Sulasula), locally known as ‘Fou Bet’, play an important role as indicators of marine hotspots since they join forces with other top-level predators such as tuna when foraging for their prey. Therefore, understanding their movements at sea by tracking them can help inform the designation of marine protected areas.

This is why the Island Conservation Society (ICS) teamed up with Université de la Réunion (UR), the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Island Biodiversity and Conservation Centre (IBC/UniSey) to contribute to the local and global understanding of the Red-Footed Booby. The red-footed booby breeds and roosts in large numbers at the two study sites located on Farquhar and St. François atolls. Despite its significance for Seychelles’ biodiversity, there is only limited data on the population of the species, its movements, and habitat selection.

Preliminary results using circular plots showed that the population was 11,703 (+/-1361) (April 2019) and 10,344 (+/-1581) pairs (November 2019), respectively. This meant that RFBs were breeding more or less all year round at Farquhar Atoll. To track the movements of these seabirds, GPS tracking devices were deployed on 54 red-footed boobies. All tags were successfully recovered, and 110 foraging tracks were identified, with boobies setting out to fish at sunrise and returning to their colony at dusk, spending up to 12.5 hours at sea. However, a small number of birds went on trips that were up to 3 days in duration, spending the night at sea. The boobies travelled within a radius of 200km around Farquhar Atoll, even outside the Seychelles Exclusive Economic Zone.

In addition, under this project, a total of 6 ICS staff were trained on a range of techniques, including catching, handling, measuring and banding birds, how to age chicks with biometrics data and how to deploy satellite transmitters and take blood samples from RFBs.