The Pitt Island Antipodean Albatross chick - now being tracked at sea

Satellite tracking of albatrosses and large petrels at sea has become commonplace.  A recent publication reports on no less than 10 108 tracks from 5775 individual birds of 39 species.  Most of the birds tracked will have been hitherto anonymous but every now and then birds known for other reasons get to be tracked.  Here are two examples from New Zealand’s Department of Conservation.

Pitt Island’s Antipodean Albatross

The only Antipodean Albatross Diomedea antipodensis chick to fledge from Pitt Island, part of the Chatham Islands, in seven years is now “out there” revealing it’s at-sea travels online.  The globally Endangered and Nationally Critical chick was banded and satellite-tagged on 23 December 2020 after it had already walked away from its nest on the slopes of Mount Hakepa.  By 9 March it had flown over 19 000 km, spending its time to the east of New Zealand.  View the flight map and read more here.

Taiaroa Head’s ‘Royal Cam’ Northern Royal Albatrosses

The 2020/21 Royal Cam pair at their nest site, photograph by Sharyn Broni

Farther south is the intensively studied and watched (by a 24-hour streaming camera) mainland colony of globally Endangered and nationally Naturally Uncommon Northern Royal Albatrosses D. sanfordi at Taiaroa/Head/Pukekura on New Zealand’s South Island.  This season’s ‘Royal Cam’ pair - known as LGL (female) and LGK (male) from the colour band combinations on their legs - have also been fitted with satellite trackers.  They are currently flying back and forth catching food for their post-guard chick, in the main staying close the eastern coastline of South Island (click here for their flight maps).  You can watch them (and their current chick) at their nest online here.

Recent tracks of the 2020/21 Royal Cam pair: blue - female (LGL), red - male (LGK)

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 March 2021

 Black Petrel by Annanya Bhardwaj

ACAP’s collaboration with Artists & Biologists for Nature (ABUN) earlier this year on the “Painting Petrels in Peril” project was a great success as previously reported here.  Among the 50 contributing artists were four aged from 11 to 14.  ACAP’s efforts to increase awareness of the plight facing albatrosses and petrels are directed at the young and learners as well as at the general public, as shown by last year’s World Albatross Day celebrations.  It is therefore a pleasure to feature five artworks depicting ACAP-listed petrels produced by the four young conservationists (along with one by the tutor to two of them).

Annanya Bhardwaj is an ‘8th Grader’ (so aged around 13) who lives in California, USA.  She has painted the Black Petrel above from a photo by Virginia Nicol.  Her art tutor Kalaiarasi Abhilash lives in Gurugram, India.

Southern Giant Petrel by Aadrit Gupta

 a Aadrit Gupta lives in India.  His mother, Atula Gupta, founder and editor of the India’s Endangered website writes “he turned 14 this month [March] and ABUN has been a part of his life for the last five to six years [and this] keeps him motivated.”  His artwork, in graphite pencil, is of a Southern Giant Petrel, using a photograph taken on Gough Island in the South Atlantic by Sylvain Dromzée for inspiration.  Please note that Aadrit neatly labeling his drawing as of a Northern Giant Petrel is purely due to an error in labeling Sylvain's photograph by the ACAP Information Officer (who should know how to identify a giant petrel to species by now).

Three interpretations of a Spectacled Petrel by (from left) Audree Tibbitts, Lynne Waters and Olivia Stuard, from a photograph by Peter Ryan

Olivia Stuard, aged 11 and Audree Tibbitts, aged 12 are both art students of Lynne Waters of Lynne Griffey Art and Tutoring in Tennessee, USA.  All three have painted a Spectacled Petrel from the same photograph taken at the petrel’s sole breeding site – uninhabited Inaccessible Island in the South Atlantic - by Peter Ryan, the only biologist who has ever studied the bird while breeding.  Lynne has used an Elegant Writer calligraphy pen and water. Olivia’s painting is in Inktense watercolours.  She has named her petrel Palfred. 

Side by side: Audree’s painting and Michelle’s photograph

Audree Tibbitts also painted a Southern Giant Petrel with its downy chick, using Inktense watercolour pencils with white gouache, from a photograph by Michelle Risi taken on Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean.

ABUN’s Co-founder, Kitty Harvill, who currently resides in Brazil, writes that Lynne Waters was her High School Art teacher in Clarksville, Tennessee.  Good to see the connections between artists living on different continents who all support the conservation of albatrosses and petrels!

With thanks to Kitty Harvill, Lynne Waters, the photographers and the four young artists.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 24 March 2021

Sooty Shearwater, photograph by John Graham

Alejandro Simeone (Universidad Andres Bello, Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas, Santiago, Chile) and colleagues have published in the journal Biological Conservation on using beached seabirds in Chile to assess mortality from fishing fleets.  Sooty Shearwater Ardenna grisea comprised 70% of all dead birds reported.  Only 16 of the 19 281 birds in the study were positively identified as belonging to ACAP-listed species; ten of these were Pink-footed Shearwaters A. creatopus.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The Chilean coast holds a high seabird diversity and also extensive fisheries that interact with birds producing bycatch. We used data on beached seabirds reported by news media to depict spatial and temporal patterns of fishery-related seabird mortality and correlated these data with the spatial and temporal fishing effort of the three main purse-seine fleets operating in south-central Chile (33 to 40°S). Between 2005 and 2019 we detected 97 mortality events reporting >19,000 beached seabirds attributed to bycatch. Mortality was recorded between 18 and 53° S (~3800 km of coastline), affecting 16 seabird species, with 90% concentrated between 33 and 40°S (800 km), exactly where purse-seine fleets operate. Sooty shearwater (Ardenna grisea) comprised 70% of all dead birds recorded. Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) and guanay cormorants (Phalacrocorax boungainvillii) were also affected. Mortality events of Sooty shearwaters was highest (P < 0.001) between February and May (54%) and October–November (36%), coinciding with the timing of the species migratory movements; shearwater mortality was particularly high at 36–37°S (50%) and 39–40°S (36%). Sooty shearwater mortality presented a very high spatial overlap (93%) and significant temporal correlation (0.64) with combined industrial and artisanal purse-seine fishing effort targeting on Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens) and Araucanian herring (Strangomera bentincki). Our study shows when and where seabirds are more susceptible to mortality due to interactions with fisheries along the Chilean coast. This information could be used by authorities to regulate the fishing activity and focus conservation efforts to the most affected species at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales.”

With thanks to Janine Dunlop, Niven Librarian, FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town.

Reference:

Simeone, A., Anguita, C., Daigre, M., Arce, P., Vega Guillermo, R., Luna-Jorquera, G., Portflitt-Toro, M., Suazo, C.G., Miranda-Urbina, D. & Ulloa, M. 2021.  Spatial and temporal patterns of beached seabirds along the Chilean coast: linking mortalities with commercial fisheries.  Biological Conservation doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109026.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 23 March 2021

A Laysan Albatross constructed from ingested plastic debris, by Jennifer Urmston

Lauren Roman (CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Environmental Research Letters on the threats imposed on procellariform seabirds by the ingestion of marine debris.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Marine debris is a growing threat to hundreds of marine animal species. To understand the consequences of marine debris to wildlife populations, studies must go beyond reporting the incidence of wildlife and debris interactions and aim to quantify the harm resulting from these interactions. Tubenosed seabirds are globally threatened, with a near universal risk of debris ingestion and an unquantified risk of mortality due to eating plastics. In this paper, we explore the mortality risk narrative due to the acute effects of debris ingestion, and quantify behavioural and ecological factors including age, diet and foraging method. We examined ingested debris loads, types and mortality of 972 adult and immature seabirds across 17 albatross, shearwater and prion species in a global seabird biodiversity hotspot. Though age and foraging method interact to influence the incidence and number of items ingested, age and diet were the most important factors influencing mortality. Mortality is influenced by debris load and type of debris ingested and there is selectivity for items that visually resemble a seabird's prey. Immature birds that forage on cephalopods are more likely to ingest and die from eating debris than are adults. Conversely, the risk of death to seabirds that forage on crustaceans is linked to the number of plastic items ingested and is higher in adults. Debris ingestion is an under-recognised cause of tubenose mortality and is likely negatively affecting rare and threatened species.”

Read of related papers by the senior author.

Reference:

Roman^, L., Hardesty^, B.D., Hindell, M.A. & Wilcox, C. 2021.  Disentangling the influence of taxa, behaviour and debris ingestion on seabird mortality.  Environmental Research Letters 15(2) doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abcc8e.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 March 2021