Funniest zoo signs ever.

Environmental Grafitti has a gallery of the 20 most ridiculous zoo signs. I've posted some of these before, and I picked my favorite and reposted below, but go to their page to see the full set. Too funny. -MA
via Houston Zoo Wildlife Conservaytion facebok page

Photo: Sparks68

Photo: The Rocketeer

Photo: BenSpark

Photo: DiscoWeasel

Photo: Miss Fipi Lele via Joey deVilla

Photo: alexstaubo

Photo: tenioman

Photo: maestroben

Photo: via Equine Ink

Photo: AxsDeny

Photo: james michael hill

Rhino DNA kits added to South Africa's Arsenal

From Rhino Conservation.org

South Africa’s embattled rhinos now have a new weapon on their side: 1,000 DNA kits have been provided to South African National Parks (SANParks) by the faculty of Veterinary Services of the University of Pretoria.

The kits are expected yield a higher conviction rate for rhino crimes, according to Dr. Cindy Harper, Head of Veterinary Genetics Laboratory (VGL) at the Faculty of Veterinary Science.

"The ability to obtain a full DNA profile from rhino horn allows us to match recovered horns to specific poaching incidents."

SANParks CEO, Dr David Mabunda, noted that DNA profiling would allow prosecutors to be tougher on rhino crimes.

"This will certainly go a long way in changing the trend of suspects found in possession of rhino horn only being charged with possession as the horns will be linked to a carcass lying somewhere in a national park or game reserve."

Read the entire release at SANParks receives kits to fight rhino poaching .

DNA analysis at work
Indeed, it was DNA evidence that led to at least three successful convictions over the past 13 months.

For example, in June 2010, a Vietnamese rhino horn smuggler was sentenced to 10 years in prison after the rhino horns in his possession were found to be a DNA match to rhinos that were killed a few days earlier.

So far this year, DNA analysis has been instrumental in two cases which put a total of four rhino killers in jail.

In April 2011, DNA evidence helped put two killers behind bars for a combined total of 19 years.

Earlier this month, DNA analysis of the rhino and horns helped secure the convictions of two Mozambican nationals, who were sentenced to a combined total of 16 years in prison.

Killing continues
SANParks announced that the year’s rhino death toll had already reached 173 as of June 6th.

Since that time, a female rhino was killed on a private game farm in Hoedspruit. The assailants also shot and wounded her four-month-old calf.

However, the number could be as high as 186, according to sources outside the media.

US apartment complexes genotyping residents' dogs to match up to uncollected poops

picture from the always hilarious sprinkle brigade

I have always been fascinated by this idea since reading about years ago. It always seemed financially unfeasible on a large scale but this makes perfect sense. The program "poo prints" is the brain child of BioPet Vet labs and more info can be found on their website -MA

DNA tests provide the poop on bad dog owners
By NINA GOLGOWSKI
from CNN

A New Hampshire apartment complex is mandating that residents submit pet DNA samples.

Why? To check if any of them are abandoning their dogs' waste on the property.

"Ninety-eight percent do what they're suppose to do," property manager Debbie Violette said of her residents with dogs, "but there are some that don't and you don't know who that is. That'd be pretty foolish if they did that right in front of me."

Timberwood Commons in Lebanon, New Hampshire, says it is among a growing number of apartment complexes implementing PooPrints.

That's a program that matches samples of unclaimed dog waste to DNA collected through pets' mandatory mouth swabs in the hope of imposing greater responsibility among pet owners.

Violette says her violators will first receive a warning if caught, paying a $60 fee to cover the DNA costs. However, if it happens again, it's a lease violation and the offender will be forced to live somewhere else.

"They have a choice to rent here or not. If you live in that community you have to live by those rules and regulations," Violette said. "It's a privilege."

She said she got the idea from a residential community in Boston. Eric Mayer, director of franchise development with BioPet Vet Lab, says the program is currently assisting rental complexes in multiple states, with increasing interest as far away as Canada and Germany.

The tests bought through PooPrints, a subsidiary of BioPet Vet Lab in Knoxville, Tennessee, match the DNA already captured to a sample of each pet's waste. Poop that isn't scooped can then be analyzed.

According to Mayer, apartment complexes that impose a pet deposit or fee on residents could potentially cover the testing costs incurred with the initial DNA registration. The cost of the DNA analysis each time a sample is tested could theoretically be paid through a fee on convicted freeloaders.

It's a service Violette admits to be potentially costly, but with more than 30 dogs on her property, some as large as a St. Bernard, "it's really not about the money for us," she said, "it's about having a nice place to live."

And reaction has been positive, she said.

"I did have one resident that thought it was completely over the top, who's not a pet owner," Violette said. But after considering the possibility of stepping in a mess he himself didn't leave behind, "he changed his mind," she said.

Violette sees long-term benefits in the PooPrints system, saying it could reunite lost pets and owners, especially in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

Mayer says he remains focused on both environmental and human health benefits through the system.

"It's a huge problem with growing environmental impact," Mayer said of the waste. The PooPrints website estimates a single pet creates 276 pounds of waste per year. "We want people to be responsible and not leave things behind. Down the drain means it's going into your lakes, rivers and streams," he added.

New DNA-based Panda census to begin!

China to use droppings to count endangered pandas
from Reuters
Thanks to Zoran A for the link!

China will use analysis of panda droppings as it embarks upon a once-in-a-decade census of the endangered animal, state media said on Monday.

Authorities are training some 70 trackers in southwestern China who will begin their work this week and end the survey by late July, Xinhua news agency said.

"The trackers will collect panda droppings for DNA analysis, which will allow zoologists to track individual pandas and accurately estimate the number of pandas living in the wild," it quoted wildlife official Chen Youping as saying.

The census will count not only how many wild pandas there are, but also their living conditions, how old they are and the state of their habitat, Xinhua added.

The last census 10 years ago counted 1,596 wild pandas in China, most of them in Sichuan province, it said.

A 2004 census by the Worldwide Fund for Nature revealed there were 1,600 pandas in the wild.

Considered a national treasure, the panda is seen as having come back from the brink of extinction while remaining under threat from logging, agriculture and China's increasing human population.

Bummer alert: Serengeti road still a go, polticians are still tricksies.

Thanks to Deb M and Alex P for the link!

From Save the Serengeti.org
Alert! The Serengeti – Why We’re Not Celebrating
Those who believe that we’ve stopped the Serengeti highway and achieved a great victory need to step back and look again.

Whose Victory?
Unfortunately, some in the media have claimed a great victory for conservation, believing that plans for a road across the Serengeti have been stopped. Some conservation organizations have diplomatically praised President Kikwete for his wisdom.

But we do not share this view, knowing that those who have pushed for a commercial route through the Serengeti can claim their victory as well.

If their plans continue,

* They will get their road across the Serengeti.
* They get improved connecting roads on either side of the park.
* They get a bonus southern route around the Serengeti.
* The way will be paved for more development.

The current Tanzanian government has been refused funds for the Serengeti highway by every major donor, government, and lending institution in the world.

Those who want a true commercial highway clearly cannot achieve it now. But they can make inroads and later connect the dots.

A New Road Across the Serengeti is Likely
In its recent letter to the World Heritage Committee, the government of Tanzania stated that the road through the Serengeti will not be paved, but will “remain gravel road.”

The truth, however, is more complicated. No gravel road exists across this 53 km stretch. Much of this area is designated as a Wilderness Zone, with no public access.

The 10-year Serengeti management plan, painstakingly developed in 2005 by scientists, Park officials, and conservation organizations clearly indicates that the area in the northwestern part of the Park is particularly sensitive.

As shown on the map below, from the 10-year management plan, the area of the proposed road cuts through areas designated as “Low Use” and “Wilderness” zones.

The Low Use Zone “will have a lower number and density of visitors” and “more limited road network and lower bed capacity.” The Wilderness Zone in green “is subject to minimal disturbance. As a result, visitor access will be restricted to walking safaris, with game viewing by vehicle prohibited. The only infrastructure permitted will be a limited number of access roads that can be used by Park management and support vehicles for walking safari operations.”

These areas were not designated lightly. They are critical to the migration of two million animals as they make their way between Kenya and Tanzania. Of special concern to scientists is the fragmentation of this ecosystem.
Fool Me Once…
The media has been fooled before. Over the past year, the government spin publicly “gives in” and downgrades the road to gravel, saying it won’t be paved with tarmac after all.

In reality, the road was initially announced as gravel.

In November, 2009, the Tanzanian delegation to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre announced the road through the northern Serengeti. Representing their government, they stated a “53 km stretch within the Serengeti would be a gravel and not a tarmac road.”

Yet in September of 2010, appearing to give into pressure, President Kikwete said that, okay they’ve decided not to pave the road. Again on February 9, speaking to the World Bank, he repeated, “we will not build a tarmac road.” And at this year’s World Heritage Committee meeting in Paris, the mantra was repeated: no tarmac road.

In fact, the initial road surface has never been the real issue. Tanzania’s original statement of a gravel road prompted the WHC to warn of dire consequences to the ecosystem.

“The World Heritage Centre and IUCN consider that, if built, the North Road could critically impact the property’s Outstanding Universal Value and justify its inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger.”

What is different now? The government curiously says that the current road across the same 53 km stretch across wilderness zone will “remain” gravel, though no such road exists. They do not exclude commercial use, stating that it will be “mainly for tourism and administrative purposes as it is currently.” And clearly, it will be the only connection between upgraded roads being planned on either side of the Serengeti. Whatever route is now there, which is not much, will have to be upgraded to make this connection happen.

One good piece of news – the road will remain under the management of the Park. This will mean gates and restrictions. But for how long?
Just the Beginning

When the road was announced, conservation organizations and scientists immediately sounded the alarm. Though initially announced as gravel, no one, in fact, ever believed that the road would remain unpaved.

Tony Sinclair, one of the world’s leading experts on the Serengeti, wrote:

“The soils are largely of silt and cannot take heavy vehicle traffic. Although the road may be initially of murrum (a clay soil) or gravel, the increasing flow of vehicles will inevitably lead to a tarmac road. This will result in road kills when as many as one million wildebeest will be settled, not just crossing, along this road… Essentially the Serengeti as we know it will no longer exist. History has shown that once we start this process of road development, there is no turning back on the sequence.”

Last year, Serengeti Watch conducted a survey of 302 world scientists. 71% of them believed that if the road was built, the collapse of the migration would be very or extremely likely, or inevitable. See the petition and survey

Even the government’s own Environmental Impact Statement assumed that the road would not be paved, yet predicted it would carry hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. Those estimates will certainly be reduced, as yet another impact study is prepared. The expected volume of traffic should go down, and this is good.

But after the government’s latest announcement, a leading infrastructure expert wrote us saying, the road from Mugumu to Loliondo (those sections on the margins of the park) not being paved is “clearly progress against the previous statement that only the road through Serengeti section will not be tarmac.” But he adds,

“That is however only 20% (of the entire route) and likely not a great deterrent against large scale through traffic. The fundamental question remains: what would be the purpose of this road?””

Motives
Recently, information has come to light about other motives behind the highway. In fact, if some have their way, the highway will actually be a railway.

In 2010, the Uganda and Tanzanian governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the development of a new transportation route between Uganda and the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania. The route would extend from Lake Victoria through the Serengeti, on to Arusha, and then to the Indian Ocean.

Tanzania’s Transport Minister, Omar Nundu, spoke earlier this year about the plans for this new route. He stated the project would involve the construction of a new port at Mwambani harbor, near Tanga. It would also include a Tanga-Arusha-Musoma Railway. (Musoma is on Lake Victoria.)

This would give Uganda an alternate means of exporting oil and minerals, in addition to the railway through Kenya. It would also provide the Chinese with another route for minerals from the African interior, particularly coltan, a mineral used in cell phones. Along this route lies Lake Natron, virtually the only breeding ground for East Africa’s lesser flamingos. President Kikwete has recently vowed to mine Lake Natron for soda ash, regardless of what any environmental impact study says.

And the terminus of this route, Mwambani Harbor, where the Coelocanth Marine Reserve would be sacrificed.

The Future
So with the recent statement on the Serengeti road, have these big plans now changed? One June 23, one day after the letter to the World Heritage Centre was released, The Guardian newspaper interviewed Deputy Minister for Transport, Athuman Mfutakamba. The article says

“that apart from improving Tanga port, they would also construct a new port in Mwambani area. He noted that the new port would mainly serve as a gateway for consignments transported to the northern part of the country, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Southern Sudan after completing the Arusha-Musoma railway.”

The Serengeti highway has been proposed three times in the past. Inevitably, as population and trade grows, the Uganda-Tanga commercial route will be more and more compelling. Road traffic will grow, settlements will expand, and with it, what experts have feared (and predicted) all along, demands that the road be paved and fenced.

Hope
There is always hope. Not hope that traffic will be kept to a minimum, but that the Serengeti road won’t be build at all, that the area will be kept intact for the migration.

Hope that the world will see through what one world authority on wildebeests has termed “smoke and mirrors” and understand the struggle is far from over. Hope that authorities will understand the economic asset that the Serengeti represents.

And hope that people living around the park, and throughout Tanzania, will see real benefits and protect the Serengeti for future generations.

With a growing population and expanding human needs, increased pressure is inevitable. This is a critical time. To make the Serengeti ecosystem viable, we must make sure that the Serengeti provides for the needs of the people whose heritage it is.

We cannot afford to lose the Serengeti, because once gone, it will be gone forever.

Possible Solutions:
Build support for a rational solution that benefits the Tanzanian people.

What's Being Done:
Continued pressure to abandon the road altogether.

Tanzania FTW - Serengeti road cancelled

WHAT AN AMAZING WAY TO END THE WEEK!!!
Great news today - a major victory for East Africa and its wildlife, and a great victory for the power of social media. Today hope wins. -MA

Thanks to Deb M and Cyril G for the link

BY JEREMY HANCE
From Mongabay.org

In what is a victory for environmentalists, scientists, tourism, and the largest land migration on Earth, the Tanzanian government has cancelled a commercial road that would have cut through the northern portion of the Serengeti National Park. According to scientists the road would have severed the migration route of 1.5 million wildebeest and a half million other antelope and zebra, in turn impacting the entire ecosystem of the Serengeti plains.

"The State Party confirms that the proposed road will not dissect the Serengeti National Park and therefore will not affect the migration and conservation values of the Property," reads a statement from the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism. A paved road, however, will be constructed close to the park boundaries: ending at Mugumu on the western side (12 kilometers from the park's border) and Loliondo on the eastern side (57.6 kilometers from the border), allowing a slim buffer of habitat around the park. It is uncertain whether a gravel road will be constructed through the park, but if it is it will remain under the park authority TANAPA and will be used for tourists and administration according to the statement.

According to a recent scientific study direct impacts from the road would have cut the wildebeest herd down by over one-third (over half a million animals) with indirect impacts, such as poaching and new development, exacerbating the situation.

"[The road's cancellation] is a wise and insightful decision by the Tanzanian Government," Andrew Dobson, who was one of the authors on the study, told mongabay.com. "It will ensure the long-term persistence of the Serengeti ecosystem and it's world famous wildebeest migration, while also providing infrastructure to the people who live to the East of the Serengeti. It allows Tanzania to show great leadership to other African nations, by illustrating that the way to economic success in the 21st Century is to balance natural resource conservation with economic development."

A leaked government environmental impact study largely agreed with Dobson's study, finding that the road would 'limit' the Serengeti migration and hurt predator populations (lions, hyenas, cheetahs, leopards, crocodiles, etc.) due to a declining prey base.

By 2015, the government report predicted that 800 vehicles per day would cross the proposed 30 mile (50 kilometer) stretch of the park. By 2035, the number of vehicles per day is expected to rise to 3,000, or well over a million a year. Conservationists and researchers in the area told mongabay.com that these were conservative figures.

For over a years conservationists warned that the road would eventually kill the iconic migration, crippling Tanzania's tourism industry and ending one of the last great wildlife spectacles on the planet. Wildlife NGOs fought fiercely against the road, including crafting images of wildebeest being mowed down by semi-trucks.

But concern regarding the road came from more than just environmentalists. The US and German governments, as well as the UN, voiced opposition to the road plans. The World Bank offered to pay for an alternative route circumventing the park, while the German government offered to pay for local roads for cut-off people in the northern Serengeti region. Connecting far-flung local populations was the Tanzanian government's line on the need for the road, however many suspected that the road was being aggressively pushed as part of an industrial corridor to bring raw materials from the African interior quickly and cheaply to the coast. In the statement on the road cancellation, Tanzania says it is considering the alternative southern route.

"A battle has been won, but the struggle to save the Serengeti goes on. Roads will still be constructed up to the edges of the park. The pressures on the Serengeti, including a commercial corridor to Uganda, still exist. The highway across the Serengeti has been proposed three times now, and can be raised again. But yes, let's congratulate ourselves on the work we've done," reads a statement from the NGO Serengeti Watch.

Environmentalists have been increasingly concerned by government plans in Tanzania. While the Serengeti road has received the most coverage, Tanzania has also recently announced plans to mine soda ash in the world's most important lesser flamingo breeding ground, Lake Natron. The plans were abandoned in 2008 due to concerns that it would disrupt the flamingo's breeding, but were recently resurrected and put on the fast-track. Over half of the world's lesser flamingos (65-75%) breed on the single lake.

However, Dr. Dobson says now is the time to credit the Tanzanian government for safe-guarding the Serengeti ecosystem.

"President Kikwete and Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekial Maige, deserve the nation's and the world's praise for making a wise and forward looking decision at a time when they were under pressure from multiple national and international sources to make a very difficult decision," Dobson said. "They have shown great leadership that points the way to the future for all African nations."
"A battle has been won, but the struggle to save the Serengeti goes on. Roads will still be constructed up to the edges of the park. The pressures on the Serengeti, including a commercial corridor to Uganda, still exist. The highway across the Serengeti has been proposed three times now, and can be raised again. But yes, let's congratulate ourselves on the work we've done," reads a statement from the NGO Serengeti Watch.

Environmentalists have been increasingly concerned by government plans in Tanzania. While the Serengeti road has received the most coverage, Tanzania has also recently announced plans to mine soda ash in the world's most important lesser flamingo breeding ground, Lake Natron. The plans were abandoned in 2008 due to concerns that it would disrupt the flamingo's breeding, but were recently resurrected and put on the fast-track. Over half of the world's lesser flamingos (65-75%) breed on the single lake.

However, Dr. Dobson says now is the time to credit the Tanzanian government for safe-guarding the Serengeti ecosystem.

"President Kikwete and Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekial Maige, deserve the nation's and the world's praise for making a wise and forward looking decision at a time when they were under pressure from multiple national and international sources to make a very difficult decision," Dobson said. "They have shown great leadership that points the way to the future for all African nations."

"A battle has been won, but the struggle to save the Serengeti goes on. Roads will still be constructed up to the edges of the park. The pressures on the Serengeti, including a commercial corridor to Uganda, still exist. The highway across the Serengeti has been proposed three times now, and can be raised again. But yes, let's congratulate ourselves on the work we've done," reads a statement from the NGO Serengeti Watch.

Environmentalists have been increasingly concerned by government plans in Tanzania. While the Serengeti road has received the most coverage, Tanzania has also recently announced plans to mine soda ash in the world's most important lesser flamingo breeding ground, Lake Natron. The plans were abandoned in 2008 due to concerns that it would disrupt the flamingo's breeding, but were recently resurrected and put on the fast-track. Over half of the world's lesser flamingos (65-75%) breed on the single lake.

However, Dr. Dobson says now is the time to credit the Tanzanian government for safe-guarding the Serengeti ecosystem.

"President Kikwete and Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekial Maige, deserve the nation's and the world's praise for making a wise and forward looking decision at a time when they were under pressure from multiple national and international sources to make a very difficult decision," Dobson said. "They have shown great leadership that points the way to the future for all African nations."

Migration tracking reveals a marine Serengeti

Estimates of the daily mean position in the north Pacific of the six marine predator groups studied. Top, left to right: tuna (yellowfin, bluefin, albacore); pinnipeds (northern elephant seals, California sea lions, northern fur seals); sharks (salmon, white, blue, common thresher, mako). Bottom, left to right: seabirds (Laysan and black-footed albatrosses, sooty shearwaters); sea turtles (leatherback, loggerhead); cetaceans (blue, fin, sperm and humpback whales).

From Nature News via RARE
Decade of tagging has mapped predatorial pathways in the north Pacific Ocean.
by ZOE CORBYN

Two vast areas of the north Pacific Ocean, one off the west coast of the United States and the other between Hawaii and Alaska, have been revealed as marine counterparts of East Africa's Serengeti plain. Teeming with life, these oceanic 'hotspots' provide major migration corridors for large marine predators ranging from tuna to whales.

The discovery comes from a huge data set that synthesizes and compares the seasonal migration patterns of 23 species of predators. The findings are published today in Nature.

Between 2000 and 2009, the species were tracked under the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) programme, part of the Census of Marine Life international collaboration. Electronic tags attached to the animals recorded their movements and the water conditions around them, including temperature, salinity and depth. In total, the programme deployed 4,306 electronic tags, yielding 1,791 individual animal tracks and resulting in 265,386 days' worth of tracking data. The data derived over the course of the project have now been combined for the first time.
(click for a larger image).Block, B. A. et al.

"It is like asking, 'How do lions, zebras and cheetahs use Africa as a whole continent?', only we have done it for a vast ocean," says Barbara Block, a marine scientist at Stanford University in California and lead author of the paper. "We have had single-species papers before on a lot of the migration patterns, but they have never been put together as a whole."
In the zone

The combined data from the tagged species, which carefully removes any bias introduced from where the animals had been tagged, shows two 'hotspot' regions where the predators' migration routes concentrate in the north Pacific. These are the south-flowing California Current off the United States, and the North Pacific transition zone (NPTZ), which runs east–west between Hawaii and Alaska along a boundary between cold sub-Arctic waters and warmer subtropical waters, and which acts like a trans-oceanic migration highway.

"These are the oceanic locations where food is most abundant, and that's driven by high primary productivity at the base of the food chain. These areas are the savannah grasslands of the sea," says Block.

Combining movement and physical data from so many tags can help to explain the behaviour patterns observed. For example, populations of salmon sharks, white sharks and mako sharks can be seen to "split the turf of the central and eastern Pacific", says Block. Records from the tags show that slightly different preferences for water temperature prevent the closely related species from treading on one another's fins.

The work also shows that many species with long migratory paths — including yellowfin tuna, bluefin tuna, white sharks, elephant seals and salmon sharks — return faithfully from their migration to the same region every season. "For me, this homing capacity has been the biggest surprise," says Block. "We didn't really know these creatures had neighbourhoods."
Pinning down predators

The TOPP data suggest that water temperature and the amount of ocean productivity from upwelling (where nutrient-rich water from the depths comes to the surface) could drive the seasonal migration of many species, with the effect particularly evident in the California Current. "Using satellite observations of temperature and chlorophyll concentrations alone, we can now predict when and where individual species are likely to be," said Daniel Costa, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a co-author of the paper.

Patrick Halpin, a marine geospatial ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who is a member of the Census of Marine Life but not of TOPP, says that the study is groundbreaking, providing not only a comprehensive picture of patterns of marine-predator behaviour in the region, but also a methodological framework for further broad-scale studies. "Future analyses originating from other regions will likely fill in a more comprehensive picture of the entire Pacific basin and identify additional hotspots," he says.

David Sims, a behavioural ecologist at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, UK, also praises the study, noting its "unprecedented number" of electronic tags. "They have launched marine animal behaviour as a 'big' science, rivalling in ambition, perhaps, some large projects in astronomy or physics," he says.

Block says that information from the study could aid efforts to protect and conserve the biodiversity of the hotspots. Knowing where and when species overlap is valuable information for efforts to manage and protect critical species and ecosystems, she says.

---
Citation
Block BA, Jonsen ID, Jorgensen SJ, Winship AJ, Shaffer SA, Bograd SJ, Hazen EL, Foley DG, Breed GA, Harrison A-L, Ganon JE, Swithenbank A, Castelton M, Dewar H, Mate BR, Shillinger GL, Schaefer KM, Benson SR, Weise MJ, Henry RW, Costa DP (2011) Tracking apex marine predator movements in a dynamic ocean. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10082

Abstract
Pelagic marine predators face unprecedented challenges and uncertain futures. Overexploitation and climate variability impact the abundance and distribution of top predators in ocean ecosystems. Improved understanding of ecological patterns, evolutionary constraints and ecosystem function is critical for preventing extinctions, loss of biodiversity and disruption of ecosystem services. Recent advances in electronic tagging techniques have provided the capacity to observe the movements and long-distance migrations of animals in relation to ocean processes across a range of ecological scales. Tagging of Pacific Predators, a field programme of the Census of Marine Life, deployed 4,306 tags on 23 species in the North Pacific Ocean, resulting in a tracking data set of unprecedented scale and species diversity that covers 265,386 tracking days from 2000 to 2009. Here we report migration pathways, link ocean features to multispecies hotspots and illustrate niche partitioning within and among congener guilds. Our results indicate that the California Current large marine ecosystem and the North Pacific transition zone attract and retain a diverse assemblage of marine vertebrates. Within the California Current large marine ecosystem, several predator guilds seasonally undertake north–south migrations that may be driven by oceanic processes, species-specific thermal tolerances and shifts in prey distributions. We identify critical habitats across multinational boundaries and show that top predators exploit their environment in predictable ways, providing the foundation for spatial management of large marine ecosystems.