The small city of Dunedin (pictured) on New Zealand's South Island will host the Eighth Meeting of the Parties to the Agreement on the Conservaiton of Albatrosses and Petrels in May 2025; photograph by Nathan Hughes Hamilton

The Eighth Session of the Meeting of the Parties (MoP8) to the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels will be held in Dunedin, New Zealand from Monday, 19 May to Friday, 23 May 2025.  

The Dunedin Leisure Lodge will serve as the venue for the week-long event, with a Heads of Delegation meeting scheduled for Sunday, 18 May 2025, in the late afternoon. 

Dunedin is home to the world's only mainland albatross colony, located only 30km from the city on the Otago Peninsula/Muaūpoko. Visitors are able to witness the magnificent Northern Royal Albatrosses by booking a tour through The Royal Albatross Centre.

Information on location, key dates, applications for observer status, accommodation and the provisional agenda. may be found in MoP8 Meeting Circular 1.  

The circular is available in French and Spanish and also includes a provisional agenda for the MoP.  

The latest Advisory Committee Report (AC14) is available at the ACAP website, here.

21 October 2024

Antipodean Albatrosses at sea, artwork by James Allan

Inspired by his photographs taken at sea, Australian artist, James Allan, has produced a linocut of two flying Antipodean Albatrosses Diomedea antipodensis.  The species, endemic to New Zealand, is categorized as globally Endangered, and Nationally Critical in New Zealand, and has been recognized as a Species of Special Concern by the Albatross and Petrel Agreement.  ACAP ACAP Latest News reached out to James, who lives in Adelaide Hills, South Australia, to learn more about his artwork, and about him.

James describes himself as an amateur artist, writing” I was taught lino printing in Grade 6 at school.  My teacher asked me to make prints in the art centre on the school open day. I have been largely self-taught since then, but have attended classes with the  Ruth Tuck Art School in the last few months.”

He describes the process he follows: “I usually draw the design on a piece of linoleum with a pencil and carve it out with a v-shaped chisel.  Larger white areas are removed with a u-shaped chisel. It helps to create textures to represent different tonal values.  Ink is applied with a rubber roller and paper is placed onto the inked lino and pressure applied.  At the printing school a large metal press is used.  At home I can press the paper with a metal spoon.  It is possible to cut several different lines to represent different colours  I often colour the print by applying a water colour wash., a bit like colouring in a colouring-in book.”

James continues: “The design of the two Antipodean Albatrosses was cut into vinyl.  This has slightly different properties to linoleum, being firmer and elastic. It is the largest print I have ever made at 30x40 cm.  A colour version was designed using Photoshop, but will be painted by hand when I do my final run.  The colours will vary from print to print.  The print can also be produced in black and white, and I think it looks very handsome without colour.”

Dorsal view.  Inspiration for the linocut, Antipodean Albatross at sea, 07 April 2024, photograph by Frances and James Allan

James, along with his wife Frances, joined a pelagic tour out of Port MacDonnell, South Australia run by David Harper. on 7 April 2024, the third they have attended.  “We were excited to see Buller's Albatross Thalassarche bulleri for the first time.  We met many excellent birders on the trip who were keen to teach us both about the pelagic birds we saw.  During the trip we both took photographed Antipodean Albatrosses quite close to the boat, flying in, circling and feeding on the water.  I was taken by the vermiculation of some of the adult birds and thought it would make a good design.”

Ventral view.  Inspiration for the linocut, Antipodean Albatross at sea, 07 April 2024, photograph by Frances and James Allan

He continues “I chose the flying albatross design as it conveyed the enormity of the birds we saw with their outstretched wings.  One albatross is seen from the dorsal aspect, the other ventral.  The waves and clouds are important elements and were also adapted from photos we took.  The final design is a collage of different photographs with a little bit of artistic licence.  I feel that it is always better to design the print than to merely reproduce exact detail from a photograph.  In lino designs you have a limited palate of line and texture, which means you need to learn to be more expressive with what you have.  One of the things that drew me to this medium in the first place, is that lino prints often have a charm for simplicity, expressive marks and clever design.”

James ends by saying that he is still learning and regards himself as a beginner but plans a print run of his albatross linocut.  ACAP’s Emeritus Information Officer wants one!

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 18 October 2024

A Black Petrel near its burrow on Great Barrier Island, photograph by Joanna Sims

Elizabeth ‘Biz’ Bell (Blenheim, New Zealand) has determined the incubation period for 110 eggs of the ACAP-listed Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni as to be a mean of 56.5 days, with a range of 42 to 71 days, based on information collected over 12 breeding seasons.

The information was collected as part of a long-term study of the Vulnerable petrel on Great Barrier Island/Aotea, and has been published in the journal Notornis.

Reference:

Bell, E. A. 2024. When one pair is enough: determining the incubation period for tākoketai | black petrels (Procellaria parkinsoni). Notornis 71: 57-58.

17 October 2024

An Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross in waters off Tristan Da Cunha; photograph by Ross Wheeler

Melinda G. Connors (School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, USA) and colleagues have published in the Journal of Experimental Biology on the energy costs of dynamic soaring on albatrosses.

The paper’s abstract follows: 

“Estimates of movement costs are essential for understanding energetic and life-history trade-offs. Although overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA) derived from accelerometer data is widely used as a proxy for energy expenditure (EE) in free-ranging animals, its utility has not been tested in species that predominately use body rotations or exploit environmental energy for movement. We tested a suite of sensor-derived movement metrics as proxies for EE in two species of albatrosses, which routinely use dynamic soaring to extract energy from the wind to reduce movement costs. Birds were fitted with a combined heart-rate, accelerometer, magnetometer and GPS logger, and relationships between movement metrics and heart rate-derived V̇_O2, an indirect measure of EE, were analyzed during different flight and activity modes. When birds were exclusively soaring, a metric derived from angular velocity on the yaw axis provided a useful proxy of EE. Thus, body rotations involved in dynamic soaring have clear energetic costs, albeit considerably lower than those of the muscle contractions required for flapping flight. We found that ODBA was not a useful proxy for EE in albatrosses when birds were exclusively soaring. As albatrosses spend much of their foraging trips soaring, ODBA alone was a poor predictor of EE in albatrosses. Despite the lower percentage of time flapping, the number of flaps was a useful metric when comparing EE across foraging trips. Our findings highlight that alternative metrics, beyond ODBA, may be required to estimate energy expenditure from inertial sensors in animals whose movements involve extensive body rotations.”

Reference:

Conners, M.G., Green, J.A., Phillips., R.A., Orben, R.A., Cui, C., Djurić, P.M., Heywood, E., Vyssotski, A.L. & Thorne, L.H. 2024.  Dynamic soaring decouples dynamic body acceleration and energetics in albatrosses. J. Exp. Biol. 227 (18): jeb247431. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.247431

16 October 2024