ACAP will hold the 10th Meeting of its Advisory Committee in Wellington, New Zealand next month, preceded by meetings of its Seabird Bycatch Working Group (SBWG8) and Population and Conservation Status Working Group (PaCSWG4).

Meeting Documents (available in the three ACAP languages of English, French and Spanish) and Information Papers (available in their submitted language only) are now publicly available on this website. To access them click on documents on the home page bar and then open Advisory Committee and Working Groups. Most documents may be read in their entirety but some have been password-restricted by their submitting Parties and only their abstracts are in the public domain.

Want to know what the 13 ACAP Parties have been up to of late in conserving albatrosses and petrels? Then consult their 2017 Implementation Reports to the advisory committee here.

Provisional agendas and meeting schedules are also available for consultation on this web site at the above links.

Globally Near Threatened Buller's Albatross at The Snares, endemic to New Zealand; photograph by Paul Sagar

The ACAP Information Officer will be attending all the Wellington meetings and ACAP Latest News will post daily updates of the proceedings, both in the formal sessions and on associated activities being organized by the host nation.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 16 August 2017

Next month the 10th Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee will be hosted by New Zealand in the capital city of Wellington. The meeting will be preceded by meetings of two of its three working groups. A number of social events have been planned for the two weeks of meetings as set out in the meetings’ third circular and summarised below.

AC10 will kick off with New Zealand hosting an evening welcome event on Monday 11 September in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. This event will include the Seabird Smart Award for 2017 presentation by Southern Seabirds Solutions.

The next evening the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society of New Zealand (a BirdLife national partner) has invited delegates and attendees to drinks and a light meal to celebrate New Zealand’s role as seabird capital of the world. The reception will be held in Forest & Bird’s national office in Wellington.

New Zealand will also be hosting a field trip to Zealandia - “the world’s first fully-fenced urban ecosanctuary” - for all AC10 delegates on Thursday 14 September. Visits to the collections at the Te Papa will also be arranged. A six-hour pelagic trip to the Cook Strait, separating New Zealand’s North and South Islands, has been scheduled for up to 20 delegates on Sunday 10 September. This trip will be weather dependent and ACAP’s Information Officer hopes the sea will be forgiving enough for him to enjoy fully the planned on-board barbecue lunch.

In addition, ACAP will hold a Pterodroma Workshop on Saturday 9 September. Persons wishing to attend the workshop should register by 25 August.  For the workshop agenda and the registration form click here.

A pair of New Zealand-endemic Antipodean Albatrosses on Antipodes Island, photograph by Erica Sommer

A discussion on the plight of the globally Vulnerable Antipodean Albatross Diomedea antipodensis, endemic to New Zealand, will be conducted in the meetings’ margins as time permits.

John Cooper, ACAP information Officer, 15 August 2017

Rachael Alderman (Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) and Alistair Hobday have published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography on using an insecticide to combat avian pox in the Shy Albatross Thalassarche cauta. Survival of sprayed chicks was significantly higher than of those in control areas.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Conservation of marine species typically focuses on monitoring and mitigating demonstrated stressors where possible. Evidence is accumulating that some species will be negatively affected in the future by climate change and that reduction of existing stressors may not be sufficient to offset these impacts. Recent work suggests the shy albatross (Thalassarche cauta) will be adversely affected by projected changes in environmental conditions under plausible climate change scenarios. Furthermore, modelling shows that elimination of the principal present-day threat to albatrosses, fisheries bycatch, an achievable and critical priority, may not be sufficient to reverse projected population declines due to climate impacts, which cannot be directly eliminated. Here, a case study is presented in which a range of intervention options, in preparation for predicted climate change impacts, are identified and evaluated. A suite of 24 plausible climate adaptation options is first assessed using a semi-quantitative cost–benefit–risk tool, leading to a relative ranking of actions. Of these options, increasing chick survival via reduction of disease prevalence through control of vectors, was selected for field trials. Avian insecticide was applied to chicks’ mid-way through their development and the effect on subsequent survival was evaluated. Survival of treated chicks after six weeks was significantly higher (92.7%) than those in control areas (82.1%). This approach shows that options to enhance albatross populations exist and we argue that testing interventions prior to serious impacts can formalise institutional processes and allow refinement of actions that offer some chance of mitigating the impacts of climate change on iconic marine species.”

Shy Albatrosses on Albatross Island, photograph by Matthew Newton

Reference:

Alderman, R. & Hobday, A.J. 2017. Developing a climate adaptation strategy for vulnerable seabirds based on prioritisation of intervention options. Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 140: 290-297.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 14 August 2017

Lindsay Young of Pacific Rim Conservation has reported on a successful operation to remove a piece of ingested plastic and pieces of a red balloon from a Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis chick.  The bird was being hand-reared at the James Campbell National Wildlife Reserve on the Hawaiian island of Oahu as part of an attempt to create a new colony not subject to predicted sea-level rise.

The translocated chick, which was underweight when collected was failing to thrive and gain mass, but after removal of the foreign items went on to fledge successfully (although still underweight); read her illustrated account here.  A video clip taken during an endoscopy that followed an ultrasound scan of the albatross reveals the offending items.

A hand-reared Laysan Albatross chick gets a meal, photograph by Greg Koob, USFWS

Meanwhile, over in Australia, a balloon and a plastic spoon have been removed from the stomach of a Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus in a similar operation (click here).  In both cases the ballons were coloured red, suggesting a preference for items of that colour -as has been suggested for North Pacific albatrosses swallowing cigarette lighters.  Seems the lyrics of the "Red Balloon" song by Charli XCX need a rewrite:

"If you got troubles, let 'em go
Let 'em soar so high, high into the sky
Just like a red balloon

Ah ooh!
Don't let your worries get to you
Let 'em float on by, high into the sky
Just like a red balloon"

(click here).

Reference:

Cooper, J. Auman, H.J. & Klavitter, J. 2004. Do the albatrosses of Midway Atoll select cigarette lighters by color? Pacific Seabirds 31: 2-4.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 11 August 2017