Peter Ryan, Director of the University of Cape Town’s Percy FitzPatrick Institute, has been awarded the Gilchrist Memorial Medal by the South African Network for Coastal and Oceanic Research (SANCOR).  Peter manages the Institute’s research on albatrosses and petrels at Marion and Gough Island and at sea in the Southern Ocean, as well as researchng and publishing on marine pollution.

Peter Ryan in his natural habitat: an oceanic seabird island, photograph by Norman Glass

The citation text follows:

“Peter Ryan is one of the most prolific marine scientists that South Africa has ever produced. He has an H index of over 50! He is the Director of the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, but he doesn’t just study birds. He works on pollution and marine litter, he dabbles in fishes and barnacles and he makes real contributions to the management and conservation of marine resources. Peter is one of the go-to guys for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and BirdLife International when it comes to seabird conservation and he is worthy recipient of the Gilchrist Medal!

Peter is an A-rated NRF researcher and has authored or co-authored more than 320 peer-reviewed papers (127 as first author). It is particularly noteworthy that Peter has published 12 books, 36 book chapters, including 180 species accounts in the Handbook of the Birds of the World, 80 species accounts in The Atlas of Southern African Birds, various reports including two island management plans, and 190 popular and semi-popular articles. Peter has presented papers and posters at 18 international symposia and has been invited to present seminars at numerous institutions both in South Africa and overseas. Peter has been active in numerous leadership roles also been president of BirdLife South Africa (2010-2012), and has played key roles as an advisor for the “Working for the Coast” programme with the Two Oceans Aquarium’s education division and for the Birds for NEMBA legislation, to mention a few. Peter has supervised or co-supervised 15 PhD students, 18 MSc students by dissertation, 57 research projects of MSc students conducting their degrees by coursework and dissertation (54 in Conservation Biology and three in Applied Marine Science), as well as numerous BSc Honours projects (in Zoology, Biological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering). He currently supervises 5 PhD and 8 MSc students.”

The Gilchrist Memorial Medal, awarded every three years, is named after ichthyologist John Gilchrist (1866–1926) who worked in South Africa.  The previous medal award was to University of Cape Town’s marine biologist Coleen Moloney in 2014.  Coleen is Peter’s partner: keeping it in the family!

Read a review of Peter's latest book, a guide to southern African seabirds, here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 July 2017

Stephen Horn has been appointed as the Pest Eradication Project Manager by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation to lead the eradication of the remaining introduced mammals on sub-Antarctic Auckland Island.  Stephen previously managed the “Million Dollar Mouse Campaign” that successfully baited New Zealand’s Antipodes Island last year in an attempt to eradicate its population of House Mice Mus musculus (click here).

A specialist team led by Stephen will now develop a feasibility study for the eradication of pigs Sus scrofa,feral cats Felis catus and mice from the island, intended to be published in February next year.  Read more here and here.

A White-capped Albatross on Auckland Island, photograph by Graham Parker

According to one news story, the pigs will be hunted and trapped with the aid of dogs (click here).

Read an earlier posting on the planned Auckland Island eradication in ACAP Latest News here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 24 July 2017

Dominic Rollinson (FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa) and colleagues have published in the African Journal of Marine Science on the numbers of seabirds estimated killed by foreign and domestic pelagic longliners around South Africa.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Both foreign and domestic pelagic longline fishing vessels operate in South Africa’s Exclusive Economic Zone and adjacent international waters where they kill hundreds of seabirds each year as bycatch.  To update assessments of the impact of the pelagic longline fishery on seabirds off South Africa, information on necropsied seabirds and national fisheries observer bycatch records were summarised for 2006–2013.  Foreign-flagged (Asian) vessels had 100% observer coverage throughout the study period, whereas only 6% of the fishing effort by South African-flagged vessels was observed (with no coverage in 2011–2013).  Vessels with observers caught seabirds at a rate of 0.132 birds per 1 000 hooks, resulting in an estimated mortality of 2 851 individuals (356 per year) comprising 14 species.  Extrapolation of the observed fishing sets to the unobserved fishing sets by the South African domestic longline fleet suggested that approximately 750 additional birds were likely killed during the study period, therefore a combined 450 birds were killed per year.  White-chinned petrel Procellaria aequinoctialis was the most frequently killed species (66%), followed by ‘shy-type’ albatrosses Thalassarche cauta/steadi (21%), black-browed albatross T. melanophris (7%), Indian yellow-nosed albatross T. carteri (3%), and Cape gannet Morus capensis (2%). The seabird bycatch rates were lower than in 1998–2005. Nationality of the vessel, time of line-setting, moon phase, year, season, fishing area, and seabird bycatch mitigation measures all influenced seabird mortality. Concurrent with 100% observer coverage, significant reductions in the seabird bycatch rate occurred in the Asian fleet in the latter years of the study, and these rates now approximate the national target (0.05 birds per 1 000 hooks). However, seabird bycatch rates remained high in the South African fleet, where no observers were deployed during 2011–2013, highlighting the need for independent observer programmes in fisheries - a matter of global interest. Suggestions are made as to how seabird bycatch by pelagic longline fisheries off South Africa may be further reduced.”

A Shy Albatross trails a fishing line, photograph by Robert Hynsco

Reference:

Rollinson, D.P., Wanless, R.M. & Ryan, P.G. 2017.  Patterns and trends in seabird bycatch in the pelagic longline fishery off South Africa.  African Journal of Marine Science 39: 9-25.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 21 July 2017

A postdoc is required at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool to study whether seabirds can detect infrasound (click here).

“You will work on a large collaborative grant, examining the use of infrasound for seabird navigation. The post will involve the analysis of large seabird bio-logging datasets, to examine the global movement decisions of individuals, populations and species. You will work with other researchers on the grant to integrate movement trajectories with atmospheric and oceanographic models and, design and implement, novel analytical techniques to capture movement decisions and navigation. Combining these with new measures of aural structures, the post will conduct phylogenetic analyses on seabird movement, habitat choice and navigation across species. The grant will involve four post-doctoral researchers and this specific post will focus on seabird ecology and movement. The data will be gathered from pre-existing bio-logging projects and novel bio-logging devices will be developed to measure in situ infra-sound with a variety of environment variables. Overall, the project will address whether seabirds can detect infrasound, alter their behaviour in response to it and assess its importance in the life-history of different species. You should have a PhD in biology or ecology. The post is available from 1 October 2017 until 31 September 2020.”

Shy Albatross - photograph by Aleks Terauds

Closing date for applications is 29 August 2017.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 20 July 2017