**5. Conclusions**

The productive waters of the Benguela upwelling system provide foraging opportunities for large numbers of seabirds, including 16 species that breed in the BCLME and c. 66 species that visit it.

In the 1800s and 1900s collections of penguin eggs took place over almost 100 years but proved unsustainable. Seabird guano was extracted over >100 years but purse-seine fisheries initiated after World War 2 depleted forage resources and led to decreases of guano-producing seabirds. Recently seabird ecotourism in the BCLME has been expanding.

After the 1950s guano production decreased in the central BCLME but increased in the north and was stable in the south until the cessation of extractions at islands. After the 1970s there were decreases of and shifts to the north or south in distributions of the three 'guano-producing' seabirds. There were similar redistributions of several other seabirds. The altered distributions likely resulted from both intensive fishing and environmental change.

The conservation status of seabirds breeding in the BCLME has deteriorated. Main threats to these species include food scarcity and loss of breeding habitat, which need to be controlled if socio-economic and ecosystem benefits of seabirds are to be maintained. Although fishery by-catch and invasive mammalian predators are important threats to several seabirds that visit the BLCME, South Africa and Namibia have taken steps to mitigate these.

## **Acknowledgements**

We thank the Benguela Current Convention for financial support, our organisations for logistical support, management authorities for permits that allowed access to breeding localities and all who assisted with data collection and Mr. F Dakwa who assisted with drawing the map.
