Cécile Vincent

La Rochelle Université · CEBC UMR 7372

We investigated the status of the grey seal in the Molène archipelago, western Brittany, where a Marine National Park is planned. We combined regular censuses, photo-identification and satellite telemetry to investigate trends in grey seal abundance, site fidelity, individual movements and haulout site use. Individual movements and seasonal variati...

The Argos satellite system is commonly used to track and relay behavioral data from marine mammals, but their underwater habit results in a high proportion of locations of non-guaranteed accuracy (location classes (LC) O, A, and B). The accuracy of these locations is poorly documented in marine mammals. We assessed the accuracy of all LCs on four j...

It has been suggested that the large grey seal colonies around the British Isles form local populations within a metapopulation, and that seal movements outside the breeding season lead to considerable overlap between individual home ranges. Individual behaviour and population dynamics of small peripheral colonies may also play a role in the metapo...

This report is a 15-pages extended summary of the full report written by the same authors in French on the monitoring of seal colonies in France (49 PP)

Presentation at the 24th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals [SMM 2022]. "Trophic niche overlap between sympatric harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) and grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) at the southern limit of their European range (Eastern English Channel)" >>> The video of the presentation at the SMM conference can be viewed on: htt...

Habitat selection and spatial usage are important components of animal behavior influencing fitness and population dynamic. Understanding the animal–habitat relationship is crucial in ecology, particularly in developing strategies for wildlife management and conservation. As this relationship is governed by environmental features and intra- and int...

Tail flukes as well as the dorsal fin are the apomorphic traits of cetaceans which appeared during the evolutionary process of adaptation to the aquatic life. Both appendages present a wing-like shape associated with lift generation and low drag. We hypothesized that the evolution of fins as lifting structures led to a generic wing design, where th...

Sympatric harbour (Phoca vitulina) and grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) are increasingly considered potential competitors, especially since recent local declines in harbour seal numbers while grey seal numbers remained stable or increased at their European core distributions. A better understanding of the interactions between these species is critic...

Extended summary of the 2019 Annual report of seal monitoring in France

Annual report of seal monitoring in France (in French) - 2019

Annual report of seal monitoring in mainland France (in French)

The harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) is the world’s most widely distributed pinniped species ranging from temperate to Arctic regions (30–78.5 °N in the Atlantic, 28–61.2 °N in the Pacific), but no detailed overview of the species status exists. The aims of this review are to (i) provide current information on the genetic structure, population status,...

1. Understanding the animal-habitat relationship at local scale is crucial in ecology, particularly to develop strategies for wildlife management and conservation. As this relationship is governed by environmental features and intra and inter-specific interactions, habitat selection of a population may vary locally between its core and edges. 2. Th...

PREPRINT VERSION // Submitted to Ecology and Evolution // Final accepted version: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7739 // ABSTRACT : Competition between the sympatric harbour (Phoca vitulina) and grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) is thought to underlie some recent local declines of the former while the population of the latter remains stable or increase...

The author would like to correct the Fig. 4 of the published article.

There is high spatial overlap between grey seals and shipping traffic, and the functional hearing range of grey seals indicates sensitivity to underwater noise emitted by ships. However, there is still very little data regarding the exposure of grey seals to shipping noise, constraining effective policy decisions. Particularly, there are few predic...

Tail flukes as well as the dorsal fin are the apomorphic traits of cetaceans appeared during evolutionary process of adaptation to the aquatic life. Both appendages present a generic wing-like shape associated with lift generation and low drag. Variability of the form of appendages was studied in seven species of cetaceans having different body siz...

Available from https://www.cebc.cnrs.fr/wp-content/uploads/publipdf/2020/PMB167_2020.pdf /// ABSTRACT: Accurately locating the foraging areas of diving marine predators is central to understanding their ecology and implementing conservation and management regulations. This study compares horizontal and vertical approaches of identifying seal foragi...

1. In the United Kingdom (UK), several harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) populations have been declining over the past decade. In order to understand the effect of these changes in abundance, this study seeks to determine the population structure of harbour seals in the UK, and in Scotland in particular, on a wider and finer spatial scale than has prev...

Grey (Halichoerus grypus) and harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) are sympatric seal species, but they display distinct strategies of habitat use and connectivity between haulout sites. The distribution patterns and variations in relative abundance of both species were investigated along the French coast of the English Channel, at the southern limit of...

Marine mammals help gather information on some of the harshest environments on the planet, through the use of miniaturized ocean sensors glued on their fur. Since 2004, hundreds of diving marine animals, mainly Antarctic and Arctic seals, have been fitted with a new generation of Argos tags developed by the Sea Mammal Research Unit of the Universit...

Marine mammals help gather information on some of the harshest environments on the planet, through the use of miniaturized ocean sensors glued on their fur. Since 2004, hundreds of diving marine animals, mainly Antarctic and Arctic seals, have been fitted with a new generation of Argos tags developed by the Sea Mammal Research Unit of the Universit...

Seals help gather information on some of the harshest environments on the planet, through the use of miniaturized ocean sensors glued on their fur. The resulting data – gathered from remote, icy seas over the last decade – are now freely available to scientists around the world from the data portal http://www. meop.net. The Polar oceans are changin...

Shipping noise is a threat to marine wildlife. Grey seals are benthic foragers, and thus experience acoustic noise throughout the water column, which makes them a good model species for a case study of the potential impacts of shipping noise. We used ship track data from the Celtic Sea, seal track data and a coupled ocean-acoustic modelling system...

Early warning systems were interested in captured data of mobile objects. From the 2000s, a new generation of data capture equipment arrives. These capture devices rise large scale trajectory data. How early warning systems can integrate these masses of data? How they can give real-time answers to users queries? In this paper, we present an ontolog...

The roles of the marine national park of the Iroise Sea (France) are to maintain marine biodiversity, including the southernmost grey seal colony in the Eastern Atlantic, whilst managing sustainable human activities. This study compares the fish biomass taken by local seals and the landings by man in the Iroise Sea. Sixteen seals were satellite tra...

Capture devices rise large scale trajectory data from moving objects. These devices use different technologies like global navigation satellite system (GNSS), wireless communication, radio-frequency identification (RFID), and other sensors. Huge trajectory data are available today. In this paper, we use an ontological data modeling approach to buil...

The current information systems manage several, different and huge databases. The data can be temporal, spatial and other application domains with specific knowledge. For these reasons, new approaches must be designed to fully exploit data expressiveness and heterogeneity taking into account application’s needs. As part of ontology-based informatio...

Species distribution maps can provide important information to focus conservation efforts and enable spatial management of human activities. Two sympatric marine predators, grey seals Halichoerus grypus and harbour seals Phoca vitulina, have overlapping ranges on land and at sea but contrasting population dynamics around Britain: whilst grey seals...

In France, the first marine national park was set up in 2007 in the Iroise Sea, western Brittany, encompassing several Special Areas of Conservation (SAC). The park is resident to 1 of only 3 gray seal colonies in France. The at-sea habitat use of gray seals in the marine park is poorly understood and direct interactions with human activities are e...

Capture devices rise large scale trajectory data from moving objects. These devices use different technologies like global navigation satellite system (GNSS), wireless communication, radio-frequency identification (RFID), and other sensors. Huge trajectory data are available today. In this paper, we use an ontological data modeling approach to buil...

Two grey seals’ trips at sea were tracked by Fastloc GPS/GSM telemetry between the French and English coasts. This study investigates the effect of sea currents on the seals’ tracks by modeling their movements using a numerical tidal model based on TELEMAC software (EDF LNHE, France). The seals were modeled as «active» drifting-buoys for which head...

Nowadays, with a growing use of location-aware, wirelessly connected, mobile devices, we can easily capture trajec-tories of mobile objects. To exploit these raw trajectories, we need to enhance them with semantic information. Several research elds are currently focusing on semantic trajectories to support inferences and queries to help users valid...

Several applications use devices and capture systems to record trajectories of mobile objects. To exploit these raw trajectories, we need to enhance them with semantic information. Temporal, spatial and do-main related information are fundamental sources used to upgrade tra-jectories. The objective of semantic trajectories is to help users validati...

Nowadays, with a growing use of location-aware, wirelessly connected, mobile devices, we can easily capture trajectories of mobile objects. To exploit these raw trajectories, we need to enhance them with semantic information. Several research fields are currently focusing on semantic trajectories to support queries and inferences to help users for...

Nowadays, with a growing use of location-aware, wirelessly connected, mobile devices, we can easily capture trajectories of mobile objects. To exploit these raw trajectories, we need to enhance them with semantic information. Several re-search fields are currently focusing on semantic trajectories to support queries and inferences to help users for...

Antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii were determined in serum samples from 47 grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) and 56 harbor seals (Phoca vitulina vitulina) from the Atlantic coasts of United Kingdom and France. Antibodies to T. gondii assayed by the modified agglutination test (MAT) were found in 14 (13.6%; IC(95%): 7.0-20.2) of 103 seals tested, with t...

Winter movements and habitat use of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) were investigated in two tidal bays in France, at the southern limit of their species range in the Northeast Atlantic. We fitted 15 seals with Fastloc™GPS/GSMtags in the Baie du Mont-Saint-Michel (BMSM) and the Baie des Veys (BDV). Tags relayed 20.6±7.1 GPS locations per seal-day, 8...

The north-east Atlantic grey seal, Halichoerus grypus, is widely distributed along the European coastline from northern Russia to France, with the core population centred around Scotland. To date, very little is known of the diet of the species at the southern margin of the species range. However, because grey seal numbers have been increasing over...

The grey seal was a common species along mainland Europe during the Stone Age (8,000-5,500 BC). Along the North Sea coast populations started to decline substantially during the 11th century as a result of excessive hunting. The last breeding populations disappeared in the 16th century in the Wadden Sea, and before 1900 in the Kattegat-Skagerrak an...

The fate of rehabilitated marine mammals after release is important at both the individual level, concerning the survival and re-adaptation of the animal to the wild environment, and at the popu-lation level, regarding the impact of the return of rehabilitated animals for the conservation of local groups. Ninety-two juvenile grey seals (Halichoerus...

The fate of rehabilitated marine mammals after release is important at both the individual level, concerning the survival and re-adaptation of the animal to the wild environment, and at the population level, regarding the impact of the return of rehabilitated animals for the conservation of local groups. 92 juvenile grey seals (Halichoerus grypus),...

Summary - The stability of natural markings is critical to all photo identification studies. In this study we assessed the stability of natural pelage markings in grey seals, comparing visually a series of photos taken from a small population over several years. We observed that the pattern tends to darken with age, and that this process seems to o...

Marine habitat use by grey seals in Brittany: application to the Marine National Park of the Iroise Sea Seminar of the Oceanographic Institute on Electronic Making and Telenetric Tracking of Large Migratory Marine Vertebrates DEC 13, 2001 PARIS, FRANCE