As part of the Large Marine Vertebrate project (Grandes Vertebrados Marinos), the Laboratorio de Recursos Pelágicos of the Dirección Nacional de Recursos Acuáticos (DINARA) from Uruguay has equipped several species of large marine vertebrates, including sharks, tunas and sea turtles, and more recently seabirds with tracking devices. 

In early July 2016 ACAP-listed Southern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea epomophora were equipped with satellite transmitters from on board the research vessel R.V. Aldebarán in Uruguayan waters.  Three individuals, one female and two males, have been tracked for nearly two months, providing novel data on the movements of these seabirds during the non-breeding period.  One week after being equipped one male began his migration back to Australasia, travelling across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans for about 20 days to reach a well-defined area east of the Great Australian Bight.  To date, the two other birds have remained in the south-western Atlantic: one bird has utilized waters on the continental shelf of Uruguay and Argentina, while the other has mainly stayed in waters off southern Brazil and Uruguay.

Southern Royal Albatross at sea

Read about the Uruguayan research in Spanish here.

With thanks to Andrés Domingo and Sebastián Jimenez.

Juan Pablo Seco Pon, ACAP News Correspondent, 14 September 2016

Ben Lascelles (BirdLife International, Pembroke Street, Cambridge, UK) and colleagues have published in the journal Diversity and Distributions utilizing at-sea tracking data, including of ACAP-listed Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans, to identify marine sites of conservation importance.

The paper’s abstract follows:

Aim.  Enhanced management of areas important for marine biodiversity are now obligations under a range of international treaties.  Tracking data provide unparalleled information on the distribution of marine taxa, but there are no agreed guidelines that ensure these data are used consistently to identify biodiversity hotspots and inform marine management decisions.  Here, we develop methods to standardize the analysis of tracking data to identify sites of conservation importance at global and regional scales.

Location.  We applied these methods to the largest available compilation of seabird tracking data, covering 60 species, collected from 55 deployment locations ranging from the poles to the tropics.

Methods.  Key developments include a test for pseudo-replication to assess the independence of two groups of tracking data, an objective approach to define species-specific smoothing parameters (h values) for kernel density estimation based on area-restricted search behaviour, and an analysis to determine whether sites identified from tracked individuals are also representative for the wider population.

Results.  This analysis delineated priority sites for marine conservation for 52 of the 60 species assessed.  We compiled 252 data groupings and defined 1052 polygons, between them meeting Important Bird and Biodiversity Area criteria over 1500 times.  Other results showed 13% of data groups were inadequate for site definition and 10% showed some level of pseudo-replication.  Between 25 and 50 trips were needed within a data group for data to be considered at least partially representative of the respective population.

Main conclusions.  Our approach provides a consistent framework for using animal tracking data to delineate areas of global conservation importance, allowing greater integration into marine spatial planning and policy.  The approaches we describe are exemplified for pelagic seabirds, but are applicable to a range of taxonomic groups.  Covering 4.3% of the oceans, the sites identified would benefit from enhanced protection to better safeguard the threatened species populations they contain.”

Wandering Albatross display, photograph by Rowan Treblico

Reference:

B. G. Lascelles, B.G., Taylor, P.R., Miller, M.G.R., Dias, M.P., Oppel, S., Torres, L., Hedd, A., Le Corre, M., Phillips, R.A., Shaffer, S.A., Weimerskirch, H. & Small, C. 2016.  Applying global criteria to tracking data to define important areas for marine conservation.  Diversity and Distributions 22: 422-431.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 13 September 2016

Lauren Roman (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) and colleagues have published in the online and open-access journal PLOS One on levels of marine debris in Australian sea birds, including procellariform seabirds, with high levels reported in Flesh-footed Puffinus carnepeis, Short-tailed P. tenuirostris and Wedge-tailed P. pacificus Shearwaters.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Anthropogenic debris in the world’s oceans and coastal environments is a pervasive global issue that has both direct and indirect impacts on avifauna. The number of bird species affected, the feeding ecologies associated with an increased risk of debris ingestion, and selectivity of ingested debris have yet to be investigated in most of Australia’s coastal and marine birds. With this study we aim to address the paucity of data regarding marine debris ingestion in Australian coastal and marine bird species. We investigated which Australian bird groups ingest marine debris, and whether debris-ingesting groups exhibit selectivity associated with their taxonomy, habitat or foraging methods. Here we present the largest multispecies study of anthropogenic debris ingestion in Australasian avifauna to date. We necropsied and investigated the gastrointestinal contents of 378 birds across 61 species, collected dead across eastern Australia. These species represented nine taxonomic orders, five habitat groups and six feeding strategies. Among investigated species, thirty percent had ingested debris, though ingestion did not occur uniformly within the orders of birds surveyed. Debris ingestion was found to occur in orders Procellariiformes, Suliformes, Charadriiformes and Pelecaniformes, across all surveyed habitats, and among birds that foraged by surface feeding, pursuit diving and search-by-sight. Procellariiformes, birds in pelagic habitats, and surface feeding marine birds ingested debris with the greatest frequency. Among birds which were found to ingest marine debris, we investigated debris selectivity and found that marine birds were selective with respect to both type and colour of debris. Selectivity for type and colour of debris significantly correlated with taxonomic order, habitat and foraging strategy. This study highlights the significant impact of feeding ecology on debris ingestion among Australia’s avifauna.”

Wedge-tailed Shearwater, Photograph by Alan Burger

Reference:

Roman, L., Schuyler, Q.A., Hardesty, B.D. & Townsend, K.A. 2016.  Anthropogenic debris ingestion by avifauna in eastern Australia.  PLOS One doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158343.

John Cooper, SACAP Information Officer, 12 September 2016

Lisa Ann Sztukowski submitted a thesis to Plymouth University and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in partial fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in August 2015, based on her research on the foraging ecology of the Campbell Albatross Thalassarche impavida.

The thesis English abstract follows:

“Most albatrosses are critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable due to the deleterious impact of fisheries, pollution, introduced species, habitat alteration, and climate change.  Foraging behaviour influences many aspects of seabird biology, and a detailed understanding of foraging ecology is required to better predict the impacts of significant changes to the marine environment.  Campbell Albatross (Thalassarche impavida) is a threatened endemic, confined to a small number of locations on Campbell Island, New Zealand and was recently split from the closely related Blackbrowed Albatross (T. melanophrys [=melanophris]).  We currently lack much basic information on the foraging behaviour of this species, hindering our ability to understand how change may have occurred in the past and make predictions about it’s [sic] long-term future.  First, I used GPS loggers and stable isotope analysis of blood to investigate how distribution and foraging effort (distance travelled and duration) varied with sex and breeding stage.  I found that Campbell Albatrosses are sexually dimorphic and showed sex-specific foraging behaviour and habitat use – although this varied by stage of reproduction.  Because males and females may be vulnerable to different threats, such as interactions with fisheries, I compared the spatial overlap and high resolution spatio-temporal overlaps between fisheries vessels and albatrosses within New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Albatrosses utilised 32% of the EEZ, however they overlapped with fisheries vessels in only 0.20% of the area. Previous research has demonstrated that the influence of fisheries vessels goes beyond the immediate location of the boat itself. Campbell Albatross have low levels of spatio-temporal overlap with fisheries – with males overlapping more than females. More generally, my results indicate that adding data on fine scale interactions will improve fisheries risk assessments, and provide information needed for the conservation and management of the Campbell Albatross.  A key development in recent ecological research has been a greater appreciation that inter-individual variation in foraging behaviour can have profound population-level consequences.  Accordingly I tested for individual differences in foraging behaviour in Campbell Albatrosses.  The majority of individuals demonstrated both annual and interannual individual consistency in foraging locations, and the degree of specialisation was influenced by both sex and year.  Consistent terminal latitude and longitude of foraging trips indicated high foraging area fidelity with a degree of flexibility in the fine-scale location.  During brooding, females used the Campbell Plateau and showed more consistent behaviours than males, which tended to forage in the Southern Ocean.  This adds to a growing body of evidence of individual foraging specialisation among seabirds in general and albatrosses in particular and reveals marked inter-individual differences in vulnerability to threats.  In light of the evidence of individual foraging specialisations in the Campbell albatross, I also preformed [sic] a literature review of individual foraging specialisations across all seabirds.  I found studies examining foraging specialisation for 35 species, with 28 (80%) providing evidence of consistent inter-individual differences (i.e. specialisation).  Current studies suggest that specialisation is influenced by environmental variability vii and resource predictability, however, with limited data in tropical regions, more studies are needed to test these links.  In summary, my thesis has provided new information on Campbell Albatross foraging ecology.  Sex specific variations in behaviour and habitat use may influence conservation and management strategies. I have been able to contextualise the consistent individual differences in foraging distribution described for this species in light of global patterns of individual foraging specialisation in seabirds and highlight future areas of research.”

A Campell Albatross grooms its chick; photograph  by David Evans

Reference:

Sztukowski, L.A. 2016.  Foraging Ecology of the Campbell Albatross: Individual Specialisation and Fishery Interactions.  PhD thesis, School of Marine Science and Engineering Marine Biology & Ecology Research Centre.  163 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 September 2016