This beach-cast Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross contained a shoe sole in its stomach (click here)

Lauren Roman (CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) and colleagues have reviewed open access in the journal Conservation Letters  plastic ingestion by marine megafauna, including albatrosses and petrels.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Pollution by plastic and other debris is a problem affecting the world's oceans and is increasing through time. The problem is so large that prioritizing solutions to effect meaningful change may seem overwhelming to the public and policy makers. Marine megafauna are known to mistakenly eat anthropogenic debris and die from consequent gastrointestinal blockages, perforations and malnutrition, as well as suffer sublethal impacts. We collated information on which specific items were ingested and responsible for causing death across 80 marine species, including cetaceans, pinnipeds, sea turtles, and seabirds. We evaluated which items were responsible for the highest mortality, and which, if reduced by policy responses or other means, could result in the largest reduction in debris mortality. A limited number of consumer items were shown to be responsible for most megafauna deaths. Flexible plastic is responsible for the largest proportion of debris deaths, primarily due to gastric obstructions. Disproportionately lethal items included plastic bags/sheets/packaging, rope/fishing nets, fishing tackle and balloons/latex. Smaller items, including “microplastics,” though abundant, were seldom implicated in mortality. We provide suggestions to directly curb debris deaths of marine megafauna by prioritizing policies that would reduce or eliminate the input of disproportionately hazardous items into the marine system.”

Read a popular account of the publication by its authors here.

Reference:

Roman, L., Schuyler, Q., Wilcox, C. & Hardesty, B.D. 2020.  Plastic pollution is killing marine megafauna, but how do we prioritize policies to reduce mortality?  Conservation Letters doi.org/10.1111/conl.12781doi.org/10.1111/conl.12781.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 December 2020

ACAP-listed and Critically Endangered Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus, photograph by Pep Arcos

The ACAP Secretariat extends season’s greetings and its best wishes for an albatross- and petrel-friendly 2021 to all the readers of ACAP Latest News and to the over 5600 followers of the Agreement's Facebook page.

2020 has been a difficult year for us all.  The COVID-19 pandemic has brought great loss of life and livelihoods world-wide.  In the field of albatross and petrel conservation, research has been restricted, important predator eradication efforts have been cancelled for the year, and ACAP Parties made the decision to postpone the 12th Meeting of its Advisory Committee to 2021.

Not all has been bad for the Agreement in 2020.  The Secretariat has continued its work via correspondence and participating in virtual meetings.  19 June saw the successful celebration of the first World Albatross Day, with global publicity addressing the continued conservation crisis faced by the 22 albatross species.

ACAP will continue to support World Albatross Day in 2021: look out for an announcement early in the New Year and do continue to look after yourselves.

Christine Bogle, John Cooper and Wiesława Misiak, ACAP Secretariat, 24 December 2020

Grey Petrel, photograph by Peter Ryan

Kalinka Rexer-Huber and Graham Parker (Parker Conservation, Dunedin, New Zealand) have reported this month to the Conservation Service Programme of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation on how best to estimate Grey Petrel Procellaria cinerea numbers on Antipodes Island.

The draft report’s summary follows

“Antipodes Island is thought to have by far the largest population globally of grey petrels Procellaria cinerea, but the trend in population size over time remains unknown. This work focuses on planning an updated estimate of population size and trend. We collate and assess resources from previous work, using these to develop recommendations for field work that will yield a robust population estimate.

Our focus here is the methods and findings of grey petrel studies on Antipodes in the early and late 2000s: the feasibility study in 2001 (Bell 2002) and population research in 2009–10 (Thompson 2019). A valuable record of observations underpinned those studies, so key observations on grey petrel behaviour and occurrence over trips since 1969 were extracted from notebooks by Bell and Burgin (Appendix A).

We first collated resources, then compared and contrasted methods and findings from previous work (section Assess existing information). Requirements for a robust, repeatable population size estimate and best-practise approaches are discussed in Design a robust population estimate. Taken together, previous work and requirements inform a range of options for population size estimation, with key pros and cons noted for each field strategy (Ranked methodologies).

Balancing effort, flexibility and precision of the population size estimate, the recommended field strategy is spatial coverage distance sampling. This approach uses distance sampling following a simple-random design that maximises spatial coverage. Several other good options suggest variations but with key things in common: timing (occupancy sampling should occur in second half April), accounting for habitat lost to landslips, and using true surface areas of grey petrel habitat in calculations. With broad sampling across the grey petrel range, an accurate, robust, repeatable population size estimate can be produced.”

Reference:

Rexer-Huber, K. & Parker, G. 2020.   Antipodes Island grey petrels: assess and develop population estimate methodology. DRAFT Final report to Department of Conservation, Conservation Services Programme for project POP2020-04: Grey petrel population estimate methodology, Antipodes Island.  Dunedin: Parker Conservation.  35 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 23 December 2020

A Hawaiian Petrel or Ua‘u, photograph from the Pacific Rim Conservation Facebook page

Hawaiian NPO Pacific Rim Conservation, with field support from the Kaua'i Endangered Seabird Recovery Project, has worked for six years hand rearing chicks of translocated globally Endangered Hawaiian Petrels (‘Ua‘u) Pterodroma sandwichensis and globally Critically Endangered Newell’s Shearwaters (‘A‘o) Puffinus newelli from the inland mountains on the Hawaiian island of Kauai  The translocated chicks were placed in artificial burrows within a specially built predator-proof fence at the coastal Nihoku Ecosystem Restoration Project site within the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.

“First Flight: Hawaiian Petrels Journey to Safety” - American Bird Conservancy

''After six years of translocating both Hawaiian Petrels and Newell’s Shearwaters to [the] Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, we are thrilled to see the last of our chicks safely take to the skies to begin their lives at sea”.  All 87 Newell’s Shearwaters which were translocated successfully fledged, and 106 of the hand-reared 110 Hawaiian Petrels made it out to sea, with the last two petrels of the 2020 cohort departing this month.  So far five Hawaiian Petrels have returned to the Nihoku site as adults – a good harbinger for the establishment of a new breeding colony for one of the two threatened tubenose species that are both endemic to the Hawaiian islands.

Read earlier posts on the Nihoku Ecosystem Restoration Project in ACAP Latest News here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 December 2020