Antipodean Albatross off North Cape, New Zealand, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Last week New Zealand’s Ambassador to Spain, Nigel Fyfe, on behalf of the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Spanish Vice President Teresa Ribera yesterday in Madrid, Spain to reduce seabird bycatch.  The MoU will promote the adoption of bycatch mitigation measures, in particular those set out in the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels.  The two nations will also share information and collaborate on research on seabird conservation.

“Highly migratory species may spend much of their time foraging in the high seas.  We can’t limit ourselves to protecting these taonga [treasure] species only when they are breeding on our islands or coast and foraging in our waters,” [New Zealand] Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan said.

[New Zealand] Minister for Oceans and Fisheries David Parker said fishing in international waters posed a challenge to seabird species.  “Spain is a major fishing nation.  Together, New Zealand and Spain can play an important role in promoting best practice for seabird bycatch mitigation across the world.   This advocacy will help to protect our migratory seabirds in Pacific fisheries and beyond.”

The key actions in the MoU are to:

• Promote the adoption of bycatch mitigation measures, in particular those advised in the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP)
• Share information and collaborate on research on seabird conservation
• Cooperate in the implementation of the Antipodean Albatross Concerted Action

According to Live Ocean the MoU is designed to promote the adoption of best practice fishing methods, including using what is known as ‘three of out three’ – weighted lines, bird-scaring lines and night setting. It also includes a commitment by the two nations to advocate internationally to promote the uptake of these fishing methods (click here).

Three years ago, a similar partnership was established between New Zealand's Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries and Chile's  Undersecretaria of Fisheries and Aquaculture and its Ministry of Environment (click here).

Read more here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 December 2022

 An ACAP-listed and Critically Endangered Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus glides over a calm sea; photograph by ‘Pep’ Arcos

Joan Ferrer Obiol (Departament de Genètica, Microbiologia i Estadística, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) and colleagues have published open access in the Journal of Biogeography on the  biogeography and the evolution of Ardenna, Calonectris and Puffinus shearwaters, a taxonomic group that includes two ACAP-listed species.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Aim

Palaeoceanographic changes can act as drivers of diversification and speciation, even in highly mobile marine organisms. Shearwaters are a group of globally distributed and highly mobile pelagic seabirds. Despite a recent well-resolved phylogeny, shearwaters have controversial species limits, and show periods of both slow and rapid diversification. Here, we explore the role of palaeoceanographic changes on shearwaters' diversification and speciation. We investigate shearwater biogeography and the evolution of a key phenotypic trait, body size, and we assess the validity of their current taxonomy.

Location
Worldwide.

Taxa
Shearwaters (Order Procellariiformes, Family Procellariidae, Genera Ardenna, Calonectris and Puffinus).

Methods
e generated genomic (ddRAD) data to infer a time-calibrated species tree for the shearwaters. We estimated ancestral ranges and evaluated the roles of founder events, vicariance and surface ocean currents in driving diversification. We performed phylogenetic generalised least squares to identify potential predictors of variability in body size along the phylogeny. To assess the validity of the current taxonomy, we analysed genomic patterns of recent shared ancestry and differentiation among shearwater taxa.

Results
We identified a period of high dispersal and rapid speciation during the Late Pliocene–early Pleistocene. Species dispersal appears to be favoured by surface ocean currents, and founder events are supported as the main mode of speciation in these highly mobile pelagic seabirds. Body mass shows significant associations with life strategies and local conditions. The current taxonomy shows some incongruences with the patterns of genomic divergence.

Main Conclusions
A reduction of neritic areas during the Pliocene seems to have driven global extinctions of shearwater species, followed by a subsequent burst of speciation and dispersal probably promoted by Plio-Pleistocene climatic shifts. Our findings extend our understanding on the drivers of speciation and dispersal of highly mobile pelagic seabirds and shed new light on the important role of palaeoceanographic events.”

An ACAP-listed and Vulnerable Pink-footed Shearwater Ardenna creatopus at sea; photograph by Peter Hodum

Reference:

Ferrer Obiol, J., James, H.F., Chesser, R.T., Bretagnolle, V., González-Solís, J., Rozas, J., Welch, A.J. & Riutort, M. 2021.  Palaeoceanographic changes in the late Pliocene promoted rapid diversification in pelagic seabirds.  Journal of Biogeography doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14291.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 21 December 2021

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement has chosen the theme “Climate Change” to mark the third World Albatross Day, to be celebrated on 19 June 2022.  This follows the inaugural theme “Eradicating Island Pests” in 2020 and “Ensuring Albatross-friendly Fisheries” last year.

Translocated Black-footed Albatross chicks await feeding in the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge, Oahu in 2018; photograph from Pacific Rim Conservation

In support of World Albatross Day and its chosen theme each year ACAP highlights one or more of the 22 albatross species with posters, infographics and artworks in ACAP’s three official languages of English, French and Spanish.  The featured species chosen for 2022 are two of the three species of albatrosses that breed in the North Pacific: the Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes and the Laysan P. immutabilis.  Both these Near Threatened albatrosses have the majority of their breeding populations on the low-lying atolls of the USA’s North-Western Hawaiian Islands. These atolls – and their breeding seabirds - are all at risk from sea level rise and increases in the number and severity of storms that result in flooding, both considered a consequence of climate change.  Storm floods have even caused at least one small sandy islet to disappear into the sea, taking with it breeding sites for several thousand albatross pairs (click here).  Elsewhere in the island chain, as on Midway Atoll, storms have caused flooding of albatross nests and loss of chicks close to the shore.

ACAP will work with Lindsay Young of the Hawaii-based environmental NGO, Pacific Rim Conservation, to design infographics to be produced by illustrator Namasri 'Namo' Niumim, for the two albatrosses.  Her ‘namographics’ will illustrate the NGO’s ongoing work to create a new albatross colony safe from predicted sea level rise by translocating and hand-rearing chicks on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  ACAP is also pleased to announce it will once more be working with Kitty Harvill of ABUN (Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature) in January and February next year; this time to produce artworks for WAD2022 that depict Black-footed and Laysan Albatrosses.  Lastly, ACAP’s WAD poster designer, Michelle Risi, now moving to Aldabra Atoll for two years after an extended stay on Gough Island, will, with the help of a number of excellent photographers, produce a poster series for the two birds that will be freely downloadable next year.

Attacked by mice on Marion: a ‘scalped’ Near threatened Light-mantled Albatross Phoebetria palpebrata, photograph by Peter Ryan

World Albatross Day 2022 will also highlight other effects of climate change on albatrosses.  Examples include the warming climate of South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island, which has caused an increasing population of introduced House Mouse to turn to killing albatross chicks (click here), and recent research in the South Atlantic that suggests warming seas are increasing divorce rates in breeding pairs of Black-browed Albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris.  Evidence is also building that climate change impacts on foraging opportunities and distributions of albatrosses, including causing range contractions, which may lead to increased overlap with commercial fisheries and greater risk of being bycaught.

Climate change is impacting the world’s albatrosses in a variety of ways: sea level rise, invasive species, reproductive impacts and range shifts.  Scientists are only beginning to understand how these impacts interact with other marine threats, such as from pollution and fisheries, to affect populations. World Albatross Day is a small way to help keep the spotlight on the world's albatrosses and how they may be at risk from climate change..

You can follow these initiatives, and more, in ACAP Latest News and on the ACAP Facebook page up until World Albatross Day on 19 June 2022.

With thanks to members of the ACAP World Albatross Day Group for their valued inputs to deciding a theme for 2022.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 20 December 2022

Barbara Creecy, Minister, South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment

The Mouse-Free Marion Project is a partnership between the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and the environmental NGO, BirdLife South Africa.  In an ambitious undertaking, the MFM Project aims to remove the introduced House Mice Mus musculus which are endangering the long-term survival of the seabirds and other native species of South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island.  Thought accidentally brought to Marion by sealers in the early 19th century, the mice have been inflicting devastating impacts on the ecology of the island by attacking and literally eating alive the chicks and even adults of both surface-nesting and burrowing seabirds, including at least seven ACAP-listed species.

The project has received the endorsement of the DFFE Minister Barbara Creecy who writes “Very few South Africans have visited, or will ever get a chance to visit, the country’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island.  Yet hundreds are making their donations towards eradicating the island’s albatross-killing mice via the Mouse-Free Marion Project.  As Minister of the Department, I wish it every success and urge you to support it in any way you can!”

These globally Endangered Grey-headed Albatross Thalassarche chrysostoma chicks will not survive overnight ‘scalping’ by Marion’s House Mice; photograph by Ben Dilley

Marion Island is home to globally important populations of seabirds, including a quarter of the world’s entire population of globally Vulnerable Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans, an iconic species both famous in rhyme and for having the largest wingspan of any living bird.  Three other albatross species breed on the island, along with many species of burrowing petrels, some still in huge numbers, as well as four species of penguins.  Without immediate action, Marion Island’s seabirds face local extinction.  Left unchecked, the mice are predicted to cause the disappearance of 18 of the 28 species of breeding seabirds currently found on the island.

A House Mouse feeds on the exposed head of a Wandering Albatross chick at night.  The birds have evolved no protection against this alien invader, photograph by Stefan Schoombie

Ongoing warming due to climate change is providing more favourable conditions for mice and intensifying their impacts on Marion’s seabirds.  Removing the mice will help secure the ecological integrity of this important sub-Antarctic island and a favourable future for its globally important seabirds.  The project will also build capacity within South Africa’s conservation community for ongoing restoration efforts.

In the southern hemisphere winter of 2024 helicopters brought by sea across the ‘Roaring Forties’ from South Africa will spread rodenticide bait from underslung bait buckets in overlapping swathes across the entire island - the only method that has so far proven successful in eradicating rodents from large islands.  At 30 000 hectares, Marion will be substantially larger than all previous rodent eradication efforts undertaken on islands in a single operation.

The MFM Project aims for a better future for this Wandering Albatross chick on Marion Island; photograph by Sean Evans

Read more endorsements of the MFM Project from within and outside South Africa here.  To support the project though its ‘Sponsor a Hectare’ campaign click here.

NOTE:  This news item has been adapted from one posted by the Birds on the Brink charity (click here). 

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 17 December 2021