Wildbase Hospital, attached to Massey University, is New Zealand's only dedicated wildlife hospital, treating numbers of birds, including those listed as globally threatened.

Recently (11 June), the hospital received an ACAP-listed Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus, thought to be a juvenile by its uniform brown plumage, that had been found in a distressed state “floundering in the sea” by surfers at Castlecliff, on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.  Wildbase Co-director Brett Gartrell said an initial X-ray showed nothing wrong. A flexible fibre-optic gastroscope was then fed into the bird’s stomach under general anaesthesia then found that plastic items were causing the distress (click here).

The Southern Giant Petrel is held by Wildbase Director Brett Gartrell, photograph by Murray Wilson/Fairfax NZ

The plastic items the petrel had swallowed are displayed

“X-rays, which are taken from every bird who enters the hospital, cannot detect latex or plastic in the animal's stomach and is often only found during a post mortem examination.  The plastic can sit in an animal’s stomach preventing other food from being digested, can cause irritation to the stomach’s lining, gastric ulcers, or in rare cases can move into the intestines and cause more serious obstructions.  [It] can cause ulcers of the gut and erode the stomach."

The plastic items were removed from the bird's stomach (see the video) and the bird is now recovering at Wildbase.  “We pulled out a whole spoon, pink balloon and some sharp unidentifiable plastic.  The team was very excited to remove the contents from the stomach, but the sad thing is that many animals who swallow plastic will die before they make it to us.”

Read more here.

Read of other procellariform seabirds that have ingested balloons here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 27 June 2017

Peter Ryan (FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa) and colleagues have published in the journal Polar Biology on the distribution of the Short-tailed Shearwater Ardenna tenuirostris in the Southern Ocean.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Short-tailed Shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris are transequatorial migrants that breed at islands in southern Australia and spend the austral winter in the North Pacific. Adults feeding chicks undertake long foraging trips into Antarctic waters (to 70°S) across a broad longitudinal range (mainly 55–180°E). In mid-March 2017, we observed thousands of shearwaters in the vicinity of Bouvetøya (from 55°S 0°E to 50°S 8°E). These observations occurred more than 2000 km west of the documented range of this species, and raise the possibility that some Short-tailed Shearwaters migrate to the North Atlantic Ocean. Further observations are needed to determine whether this is a regular behaviour that has been overlooked in the past due to confusion with Sooty Shearwaters A. grisea, or whether 2017 was an unusual year for Short-tailed Shearwaters.”

Short-tailed Shearwaters off Buvet Island, photographs by Peter Ryan

With thanks to Peter Ryan.

Reference:

Ryan, P.G., Le Bouard, F. & Lee, J. 2017.  Westward range extension of Short-tailed Shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris in the Southern Ocean.  Polar Biology doi:10.1007/s00300-017-2146-8.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 June 2017

Henri Weimerskirch (CNRS-CEBC, Villiers-en-Bois, France) and colleagues have published in the journal Conservation Biology on using Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans to detect the radar emissions from and thus the whereabouts of fishing vessels in the Southern Ocean.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Despite international waters covering over 60% of the world's oceans, our understanding of how fisheries in these regions shape ecosystem processes is surprisingly poor. Seabirds are known to forage at fishing vessels, with potential deleterious effects for their population, but the extent of overlap and behavior in relation to ships are poorly known. Using novel biologging devices, which can detect radar emissions to record the position of boats and seabirds, we measured the true extent of the overlap between seabirds and fishing vessels, and generated estimates of the intensity of fishing and distribution of vessels in international waters. During breeding, wandering albatrosses from the Crozet islands patrolled an area of more than 10 million square kilometers and as much as 79.5% of birds equipped with loggers detected vessels, at distances up to 2500 km from the colony, modifying their natural foraging behavior to attend boats. The extent of this overlap has widespread implications for bycatch risk in seabirds and reveals the areas of intense fishing throughout the ocean. We suggest that seabirds equipped with radar detectors are excellent monitors of the presence of vessels in the southern ocean, offering a new way to monitor fisheries. The method used opens new perspectives to monitor the presence of illegal fisheries and to better understand the impact of fisheries on seabirds.”

A Wandering Albatross at sea (with a Pintado Petrel), photograph by Sebastian Jimenez

Read more here.

Reference:

Weimerskirch, H., Filippi, D.P., Collet, J., Waugh, S.M. & Patrick, S.C. 2017.  Use of radar detectors to track attendance of albatrosses at fishing vessels.  Conservation Biology doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12965.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 23 June 2017

Maria Dias (BirdLife International, David Attenborough Building, Cambridge, UK) and colleagues have published in the journal Biological Conservation on using seabirds tracked at sea in the South Atlantic to identify “priority sites for marine conservation”.  Four of the six globally threatened species breeding in the Tristan-Gough islands that are included in the study are listed within ACAP.  These are the Critically Endangered Tristan Diomedea dabbenena, Endangered Sooty Phoebetria fusca, Endangered Yellow-nosed Thalassarche chlororhynchos Albatrosses and the Vulnerable Spectacled Petrel Procellaria conspicillata.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The Convention on Biological Diversity aspires to designate 10% of the global oceans as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), but so far, few MPAs protect pelagic species in the high seas. Transparent scientific approaches are needed to ensure that these encompass areas with high biodiversity value. Here we used the distribution of all globally threatened seabirds breeding in a centrally located archipelago (Tristan da Cunha) to provide guidance on where MPAs could be established in the South Atlantic Ocean. We combined year-round tracking data from six species, and used the systematic conservation-planning tool, ‘Zonation’, to delineate areas that would protect the largest proportion of each population. The areas used most intensively varied among species and seasons. Combining the sites used by all six species suggested that the most important areas of the South Atlantic are located south of South Africa, around the central South Atlantic between 30°S and 55°S, and near South America. We estimated that the longline fishing effort in these intensively used areas is around 11 million hooks on average each year, highlighting the need for improved monitoring of seabird bycatch rates and the enforcement of compliance with bird bycatch mitigation requirements by fisheries. There was no overlap between the identified areas and any of the existing MPAs in the South Atlantic. The conservation of these highly mobile, pelagic species cannot be achieved by single countries, but requires a multi-national approach at an ocean-basin scale, such as an agreement for the conservation of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction under the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

A Tristan Albatross displays on Gough Island, photograph by Tom McSherry

Reference:

Dias, M.P., Oppel, S., Bond, A.L., Carneiro, A.P.B., Cuthbert, R.J., González-Solís, J., Wanless, R.M., Glass, T., Lascelles, B., Small, C. & Phillips, R.A. 2017.  Using globally threatened pelagic birds to identify priority sites for marine conservation in the South Atlantic Ocean.  Biological Conservation 211: 76-84.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 June 2017