Dietary composition and sources of variability in emerging offshore grey seal colonies in the Northwest Atlantic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Apex predators are at the centre of human–wildlife conflict, particularly when their prey include commercially important species, making it critical to understand their diet and ecological impact. In 60 years, the Atlantic grey seal ( Halichoerus grypus Fabricius, 1791) population of the Gulf of St. Lawrence (Gulf) has increased ten-folds. In response to population increase and declining sea ice, new offshore colonies have emerged in the Magdalen Islands, now the second-largest aggregation in Canada. Yet, quantitative estimates of diet composition for these colonies are limited, hindering assessments of their impact on the recovery of valuable fish stocks. Conducting hard-part analyses on 496 grey seals sampled between 2015 and 2023, we (I) characterized the seasonal diet of these offshore colonies, (II) compared diet offshore with long-established coastal colonies, and (III) examined inter-annual and age–sex variation. Diet at emerging offshore colonies differed drastically from coastal colonies, reflecting a prey assemblage exploited by a growing number of animals. Diet variation was more pronounced across years than age–sex groups, with year-to-year differences likely driven by shifts in prey availability and age–sex patterns reflecting differences in foraging capacity. These findings provide timely insights into grey seal foraging ecology across major southern Gulf colonies, needed to support ecosystem-based fisheries management.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".