The Albatross and Petrel Agreement makes small grants to projects and funds secondments that will assist the Agreement meet its objective of achieving and maintaining a favourable conservation status for albatrosses and petrels. The Secondments and Small Grants Programmes re-commenced after a gap with a call for applications in December 2017.  Four applications for secondment support were received by the ACAP Secretariat by the February 2018 deadline; all four were supported.  Ten Small Grant project applications were received; six of which were approved for funding (click here).  A summary of activities undertaken and outcomes for both programmes will be considered at the 11th Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee (AC11), to be held in Floreanópolis, Brazil later this month.

The four Secondment projects are:

S 2018-01.  Habitat selection of the Black-browed Albatross (Thalassarche melanophris) in the South-West Atlantic: importance of marine fronts and fishing activity.  Jesica Andrea Paz (Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina).  Hosted by the Chilean Antarctic Institute, Punta Arenas, Chile
S 2018-02.  Evaluacion de riesgo de captura incidental de aves marinas en pesquerias del Pacifico Sur: soluciones para el corredor migratorio Chile - Nueva Zelanda (Risk assessment of incidental capture of seabirds in South Pacific fisheries: solutions for the Chile - New Zealand migratory corridor).  Luis Adasme, Instituto de Fomento Pesquero, Chile.  Hosted by Department of Conservation, & Ministry for Primary Industries, New Zealand
S 2018-03.  Conservation of albatrosses in Brazil: definition of priority areas for conservation regarding the fisheries bycatch.  Caio Azevedo Marques, Projeto Albatroz & State University of Santa Cruz, Brazil.  Hosted by British Antarctic Survey, UK
S 2018-04.  Conectado conocimientos, personas y países: avanzando en la difusión, comprensión de las amenazas y las medidas de mitigación para la conservación de fardela blanca (Ardenna creatopus) durante todo su ciclo (Connecting knowledge, people and countries: advancing in outreach, understanding of threats and mitigation measures for the conservation of Pink-footed Shearwater Ardenna creatopus throughout its cycle).  Verónica López, Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, Chile.  Hosted by Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge - Santa Cruz, California, USA.

Pink-footed Shearwater, photograph by Peter Hodum

The six funded Small Grants projects are:

ACAP 2018-02.  Prevalence and magnitude of plastic exposure (macro and microplastics and select chemical compounds) in albatrosses and petrels off the shores of Argentina and Brazil.  Marcela Uhart, University of California, USA & Patricia Pereira Serafini, CEMAVE / ICMBio / MMA, Brazil
ACAP 2018-03.  Global review of nature and extent of trawl net captures.  Graham Parker, Parker Conservation, New Zealand
ACAP 2018-04.  Comprehensive review of the Bi-national Plan of Action for the Critically Endangered Waved Albatross Phoebastria irrorata.  Caroline Icaza, Ecuador & Elisa Goya, Peru
ACAP 2018-05.  Hookpod for seabirds and sea turtles: looking towards a multi-taxa approach for reducing bycatch in pelagic longlines.  Dimas Gianuca, Projeto Albatroz, Brazil
ACAP 2018-07.  Primera diagnosis de conservación de la pardela balear Puffinus mauretanicus en Ibiza (First conservation diagnosis of the Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus in Ibiza).  Meritxell Genovart, CSIC, Spain
ACAP 2018-10.  Assessing the overlap between threatened pelagic seabirds and trawl fisheries operating in northern Patagonian Shelf.  Juan Pablo Seco Pon & Sofía Copello, IIMyC, CONICET-UNMDP, Argentina.

Progress reports for all 10 projects are given in AC11 Inf 02.

The Small Grants round for 2019 is expected to commence with a call for applications following AC11.

With thanks to ACAP's 2019 cohort of Master of Translation student interns from Monash University and University of New South Wales, Australia for unofficial translations from Spanish to English.

Reference:

[ACAP] Secretariat 2019.  Progress Reports on Projects and Secondments supported by the Advisory Committee.  Eleventh Meeting of the Advisory Committee, Florianópolis, Brazil, 13 – 17 May 2019.  AC11 Inf 02.  18 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 May 2019

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement will kick off its 2019 round of meetings in Florianópolis, Brazil next week with a one-day strategy workshop on Sunday 5 May to discuss and develop ways for ACAP to engage with tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (tRFMOs).  ACAP has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the five existing tRFMOs and attends and contributes to their meetings every year, as regularly reported in ACAP Latest News.

The objectives and rationale for the workshop as set out in the preparatory document follow:

“Workshop objective:  Identify the most effective and efficient ways to engage with tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) to deliver on ACAP conservation objectives (2019-2022).

Workshop rationale: ACAP and ACAP Parties, along with other stakeholders such as BirdLife International and Humane Society International, have been active in engaging with tuna RFMOs (and other RFMOs) for circa fifteen years, in order to reduce bycatch of ACAP species.

In the early period (2005-2012), engagement focused on promoting adoption by tuna RFMOs of seabird conservation and management measures plus subsequent refinement (13 seabird CMM iterations adopted during this period).  2012 was the milestone when all five tuna commissions had adopted measures to require their pelagic longline vessels to use some combination of bycatch mitigation measures in (most) areas overlapping with albatross distribution.

In 2012-2018, ACAP and other stakeholders broadened engagement with tuna RFMOs to seek improvement in bycatch data collection and reporting requirements and to promote plans to review the impact of the seabird CMMs, as well as working to support pelagic longline fleets to implement the seabird CMMs.  There were also further refinements to seabird CMMs, with four seabird CMMs adopted in this period, three of which were in WCPFC [Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission].

Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), one of the five tRFMOs with which ACAP has a Memorandum of Understanding

However, data presented to tuna RFMOs indicate that bycatch rates of ACAP species remain high, while tuna RFMOs have identified that bycatch data collection and reporting remains inadequate for monitoring bycatch levels.  In February 2019, a global seabird bycatch estimation workshop was conducted as part of the Common Oceans ABNJ Tuna Project, generating an estimate of current seabird bycatch levels in the global pelagic longline fleets in the Southern Hemisphere.  In light of this, 2019 is an important moment to assess how best to engage and support global pelagic longline fleets in order to reduce bycatch of ACAP species.

The core elements that the workshop will cover are:

(i) Share views on strengths and weaknesses of using tuna RFMOs as a means to enhance bycatch reduction of ACAP species,

(ii) Based on (i), identify the aspects of seabird bycatch mitigation that are best addressed via tuna RFMO structures versus via engagement at country or fleet level.

(iii) For those aspects identified in (ii), identify the most effective approaches to successful engagement with tuna RFMOs, including what types of meetings to engage with, what inputs will be most effective, who may be best placed to undertake which role,

(iv) Prioritise which tuna RFMOs to engage with, and

(v) Provide feedback on the draft ACAP RFMO Strategy (SBWG9 Doc 07), to be presented at the SBWG9 meeting.”

The results of the workshop will be communicated to the Ninth Meeting of ACAP’s Seabird Bycatch Working Group (SBWG9) which will commence its three-day meeting the next day.

Click here to access the workshop’s preparatory document.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 May 2019

The Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA) was signed in Rome, Italy in July 2006 and entered into force in June 2012.  The objectives of SIOFA are to ensure the long-term conservation and sustainable use of the non-tuna fishery resources in the SIOFA Area through cooperation among the Contracting Parties, and to promote the sustainable development of fisheries in the Area.  To date, SIOFA has nine Contracting Parties, Australia, the Cook Islands, the European Union, France on behalf of its Indian Ocean Territories, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mauritius, Seychelles and Thailand, and one cooperating non-Contracting Party, Comoros.  Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique and New Zealand are also signatories to this Agreement but have not ratified it.

SIOFA is now advertising for a new Executive Secretary, whose role will be to ensure the efficient and effective operation of the SIOFA Secretariat based in Saint-Denis de La Réunion, La Reunion, France.  The deadline for applications is 1 June 2019.  Interviews will take place in the first week of July at the Sixth Meeting of the Parties in Mauritius.  For more details see the Vacancy Notice.

Area of High Seas covered by the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement

ACAP signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SIOFA in November last year.  The MoU with SIOFA has as its objective the facilitation of efforts to minimise the incidental by-catch of albatrosses and petrels listed in Annex 1 of ACAP that occur within the Area to which SIOFA applies (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 01 May 2019

Kelly Hare (School of Graduate Research, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand) and colleagues have published open access in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand on seven New Zealand plant and animal species with decreasing populations that are deemed “intractable”  to conservation, including the Flesh-footed Shearwater Ardenna carenepeis (globally Near Threatened but nationally Vulnerable).

Conservation actions proposed for the shearwater are land-based predator control, “expanding global co-operation on fisheries bycatch mitigation and halting the “cultural harvest”.

The papers abstract follows:

“Global biodiversity loss is accelerating at an alarming rate. While considerable effort and resources have gone into conservation management for many threatened species in New Zealand (NZ), some species are still ‘losing the battle’ despite much effort, and others have been ignored altogether. Here, we present seven case studies to illustrate the breadth of complex, often ambiguous, threats faced by taxa in NZ. These threats originate from the effects of agriculture and harvesting, irreversible habitat modification and loss, impediments to connectivity, disruption of parasite–host relationships, introduced species and susceptibility to disease, and are further exacerbated by complexities of political and legal inertia, low prioritisation and limited conservation funding. We outline the conservation challenges and identify advances needed to meet NZ's long-term conservation goals. The next 30 years of conservation require new tools in order to protect especially those ‘intractable’ species that have thus far defied efforts to ensure their survival.”

Removing plastic particles from a Flesh-footed Shearwater, photograph by Ian Hutton

Read a popular article on the paper here.

Reference:

Hare, K.M., Borrelle, S.B., Buckley, H.L., Collier, K.J., Constantine, R., Perrott, J.K., Watts, C.H. & Towns, D.R. 2019.  Intractable: species in New Zealand that continue to decline despite conservation efforts.  Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand  doi.org/10.1080/03036758.2019.1599967.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 30 April 2019