A Shy Albatross on Australia's Albatross Island; photograph by Rachael Alderman

Claire Mason (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Australia) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Ecology and Evolution an analysis of the foraging behaviour of 96 shy albatrosses on Australia’s Albatross Island.

The open-access paper is part of a themed issue “How do marine heatwaves impact seabirds?” along with 12 other publications.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Quantifying the intra- and interindividual variation that exists within a population can provide meaningful insights into a population's vulnerability and response to rapid environmental change. We characterise the foraging behaviour of 308 trips taken by 96 shy albatross (Thalassarche cauta) from Albatross Island across seven consecutive years. At a population level, incubating shy albatross exploited a consistent area within ca. 500 km radius of their breeding colony. During half of the trips, individuals utilised the closest shelf break to the west of the colony, where upwelling events have been reported. The other half of the trips were exclusively within the neritic zone, utilising a variety of locations within the Bass Strait. Furthermore, we found evidence of individual consistency to geographic locations, with subsequent trips by an individual more similar than random trips from all individuals in our data, both within and between years (G-test, p < .05). Between-individual variation in foraging behaviour was not meaningfully explained by age (linear regression, p > .05) or sex (t-test, p > .05) for any metric, suggesting that other intrinsic individual factors are accounting for between-individual variation in foraging trips. A localised foraging distribution is unusual for albatross, which, combined with high variation in space use between individuals demonstrated here, suggests that this species is accessing adequate resources near the colony. Overall, these findings suggest that incubating shy albatross from Albatross Island exhibit tendencies of a generalist population comprised of uniquely specialised individuals. These results suggest that this species is operating below its biological capacity in this fast-warming area and provide a baseline from which to assess future change.”

Reference:

Mason, C., Hobday, A. J., Lea, M.-A., &  Alderman, R. (2023).  Individual consistency in the localised foraging behaviour of shy albatross (Thalassarche cauta). Ecology and Evolution, 13, e10644. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10644

22 March 2024

Ten papers about albatrosses were presented to the Pacific Seabird Group’s 51st Annual Meeting, with the theme “Faces of Seabird Conservation”, held last month in Seattle, Washington, United States of America,.  Their titles and authors follow.  Go to the Book of Abstracts to learn more.

Predicting albatross bycatch hotspots across the north Pacific Ocean
Thomas Clay, Scott Shaffer, Josh Adams, David Anderson, Steven Bograd, Jonathan Felis, Yuliana Bedolla Guzmán, Elliott Hazen, Michelle Hester, David Hyrenbach, Julio César Hernández Montoya, Frederick Dallas Jordan, Federico Méndez Sánchez, Bungo Nishizawa, Rachael Orben, Kiyoaki Ozaki, Evaristo Rojas-Mayoral, Fumio Sato, Robert Suryan, Jean-Baptiste Thiebot, Lesley Thorne, Heather Welch, Lindsay Young & Gemma Carroll

Multiple observer comparison of satellite-based counts of the endangered Short-tailed Albatross (Phoebastria albatrus)
Risa Dickson, Jane Dolliver, Jennifer Spegon, Kristopher Pacheco & Rachael Orben

Analysis of Laysan Albatross diets from two colonies on Oahu, Hawaii
Philip Duchild, Nina Karnovsky & Lindsay Young

Sex-related variation in the distribution and relation with longline fisheries of Black-footed Albatrosses
Haruka Hayashi, Bungo Nishizawa, Naoki Tomita & Daisuke Ochi

Global prevalence of setting longlines at dawn highlights bycatch risk for threatened albatross
David Kroodsma, Joanna Turner, Cian Luck, Tim Hochberg, Nathan Mille, Philip Augustyn & Stephanie Prince

A potential tracking research of senkaku-type Short-tailed Albatross in Taiwan
Yun-Xuan Lin, Scott Shaffer, Rachael Orben, Hsiao-Wei Yuan, Chung-Hang Hung, Han-Po Chang & An Chou

History and significance of albatross banding efforts at Midway Atoll, 1936-2023
Jonathan Plissner, Beth Flint & Jennifer McKay

Identifying “in situ” Northern Buller’s Albatross (Thalassarche bulleri platei) during the artisanal longline fishery in offshore waters of southern Perú
Javier Quiñones, Christopher Robertson & Carlos Zavalaga

Detailed species composition, occurrence and behaviour of seabirds species during the fishing operation of artisanal longline fisheries in southern Peru, and strategies to prevent seabird bycatch in offshore waters of southern Peru
Javier Quiñones, Cynthia Romero, Johannes Fischer & Igor Debski

Status of social attraction and translocation of 4 seabird species on O‘ahu, Hawai‘i
Eric VanderWerf, Robby Kohley Erika Dittmar, Leilani Fowlke & Kelly Goodale

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 14 March 2024

The latest ACAP Species Infographic, released today and the fifteenth to be produced in the 31-part series, is for the Vulnerable Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus.  It is being produced in the three official ACAP languages of English, French and Spanish, as well as in Japanese, marking the fact that the majority of the species breeds on Japan’s Torishima*.  Versions in these three languages will be released shortly.  The Short-tailed Albatross infographic has been sponsored by the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology.

The Short-tailed Albatross infographic, along with the next in the series, for the Near Threatened Buller’s Albatross Thalassarche bulleri, currently in production, are being produced in support of this year’s World Albatross Day on 19 June (WAD2024) and its theme of “Marine Protected Areas – Safeguarding our Oceans”.

Decoy models used to attract Short-tailed Albatrosses to a new breeding site on Torishima, photograph by Robert Suryan

The ACAP Species Infographic series has been designed to help inform the public, including school learners, of the threats faced by albatrosses and petrels and what is being and can be done to combat them.  They serve to complement the more detailed and referenced ACAP Species Assessments, the concise and illustrated ACAP Species Summaries and the ACAP Photo Essay series.  English and Portuguese** language versions of the infographics produced to date are available to download here. French and Spanish versions can be found in their respective language menus for the website under Infographies sur les espèces and Infographía sobres las especies.

All the 15 infographics produced to date may be freely downloaded at a high resolution to allow for printing professionally in two poster sizes (approximately A2 and A3).  Please note they are only being made available for personal use or when engaging in activities that will aid in drawing attention to the conservation crisis faced by the world’s albatrosses and petrels – when ACAP will be pleased to receive a mention.  They should not be used for personal gain.

The ACAP Species Infographics have all been created by Thai illustrator Namasri ‘Namo’ Niumim from Bangkok.  Namo is a graduate of the School of Architecture and Design, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design.

With thanks to ‘Pep’ Arcos, Maëlle Connan, Yasuko Suzuki and Naoki Tomita for their help.

*Japanese versions of the infographics for Black-footed P. nigripes and Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses, both of which breed on Japanese islands, are in production.

**Being produced for the six ACAP-listed species that regularly visit waters off Brazil.  To date, those produced are for the Tristan Albatross D. dabbenena and the Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 19 March 2024

A Grey Petrel chick in its burrow on Macquarie Island; photograph courtesy of Penny Pascoe

Jeremy Bird (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Australia) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Conservation Biology on the recovery dynamics of burrowing seabirds, including the ACAP-listed Grey Petrel Procellaria cinerea, on Australia's Macquarie Island since the island’s invasive predator eradication.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Eradicating invasive predators from islands can result in substantial recovery of seabirds, but the mechanisms that drive population changes remain poorly understood. Meta-analyses have recently revealed that immigration is surprisingly important to the recovery of philopatric seabirds, but it is not known whether dispersal and philopatry interact predictably to determine rates of population growth and changes of distribution. We used whole-island surveys and long-term monitoring plots to study the abundance, distribution, and trends of 4 burrowing seabird species on Macquarie Island, Australia, to examine the legacy impacts of invasive species and ongoing responses to the world's largest eradication of multiple species of vertebrates. Wekas (Gallirallus australis) were eradicated in 1988; cats (Felis catus) in 2001; and rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), black rats (Rattus rattus), and mice (Mus mus) in 2011–2014. We compared surveys from 1976–1979 and 2017–2018 and monitoring from the 1990s and 2000s onward. Antarctic prions (Pachyptila desolata) and white-headed petrels (Pterodroma lessonii) increased ∼1% per year. Blue petrels (Halobaena caerulea) and gray petrels (Procellaria cinerea) recolonized following extirpation from the main island in the 1900s but remained spatially and numerically rare in 2018. However, they increased rapidly at 14% and 10% per year, respectively, since cat eradication in 2001. Blue and gray petrel recolonization occurred on steep, dry, west-facing slopes close to ridgelines at low elevation (i.e., high-quality petrel habitat). They overlapped <5% with the distribution of Antarctic prion and white-headed petrels which occurred in suboptimal shallow, wet, east-facing slopes at high elevation. We inferred that the speed of population growth of recolonizing species was related to their numerically smaller starting size compared with the established species and was driven by immigration and selection of ideal habitat.”

An article by the authors about the study can be found in the research-based news and analysis publication, The Conversation, here.

, here.

Reference:

Bird, J. P., Fuller, R. A., &  Shaw, J. D. (2024).  Patterns of recovery in extant and extirpated seabirds after the world's largest multipredator eradication. Conservation Biology, e14239. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14239

18 March 2024