Are current mIBA-based proposals for closed areas around South African penguin colonies flawed?

Results from a kernel smoothing approach to estimate mIBAs are heavily dependent on the value specified for the smoothing parameter h. Choices of 5 and 7 km for h for mIBA computations for the SA penguin colony at Dassen island have been put forward for the proposals for closed areas around this island by McInnes et al. (2023a,b). Data only recently available indicate a median inter-observation interval for penguin tracking data around Dassen Island of 2 minutes. This cannot be reconciled with the primary justification for such values for h being data resolution and uncertainty about where a penguin travels between observations, as it implies unrealistically large penguin swimming speeds of some hundreds of kilometers an hour. Unless other plausible justifications for such high h values can be offered, the associated mIBA proposals are thereby falsified and would need to be withdrawn