An ACAP delegation visits an albatross colony - for the first time ever

 A Northern Royal Albatross chick in the Pukekura/Taiaroa Head Nature Reserve

Day Four of a Session of the Meeting of the Parties has the ACAP Secretariat readying the meeting report and resolutions for adoption on the next and final day.  On the same day delegates are traditionally taken on an excursion organized by the host country.  The Eighth Session (MoP8) held in Dunedin, New Zealand last week over five days was no exception with an outing arranged to undertake a guided walk at the well-known (and intensely managed) colony of Endangered Northern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea sanfordi in the Pukekura/Taiaroa Head Nature Reserve on the headland of the Otago Peninsula.  The mainland Taiaroa Head colony can be visited by the public who are able to view the breeding albatrosses through a glass window in an observatory operated by the Royal Albatross Centre.

During the Second Session of the Meeting of the Parties held in New Zealand in 2008, attendees were taken from Christchurch on an excursion to view albatrosses and petrels at sea off Kaikoura.  Three years later in 2011, the Sixth Meeting of ACAP's Advisory Committee (AC6) was held in Guayaquil, Ecuador, when a group of delegates took the opportunity to arrange an outing to the island of La Plata where they saw a single Critically Endangered Waved Albatross Phoebastria irrorata brooding its chick  However, MoP8 was the first time an ACAP meeting has made an official visit to see breeding albatrosses.

 
The Royal Albatross Centre

Last week’s excursion also included a visit to a Marae (Māori community centre).  For cultural reasons no photographs were taken of the pōwhiri (traditional welcome ceremony).

The Ōtākou marae on the Otago Peninsula, all photographs by Johan de Goede

Watch a breeding pair and their chick at Taiaroa Head via the live-streaming Royal Cam operated by the Department of Conservation.

With grateful thanks to the South African Delegate to MoP8, Johan de Goede, Assistant Director, Small Pelagic Fisheries Management, Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment for the photographs.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 29 May 2025