Wisdom shows her well-known red colour band Z333, photograph by Jon Plissner, USFWS

UPDATE:

"This year’s return marks a slightly earlier arrival for Wisdom compared to recent seasons. Refuge staff are delighted to announce her mate has arrived on November 25!  He is banded as EX25 and does not [yet] have a name. Although Wisdom is not on our live camera, we are so excited to see a potential egg in the near future." {click here}.

Wisdom and her mate, EX25, find each other, photograph by Chris Forster, 25 November 2025

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At approximately 75 years old, Wisdom, the oldest known Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis, has been seen back on Midway Atoll this month as the 2025/26 breeding season gets underway.

“Biologists [Chandler Robbins] first banded Wisdom in 1956 on Midway, after she laid an egg, and Laysan albatross typically don’t breed before age 5.  In her extraordinary lifetime, she is estimated to have produced 50-60 eggs, with as many as 30 chicks fledged!  Her arrival this year is slightly earlier than usual, though her mate from last year has not yet been observed by refuge staff.  Last [2024/25] season, Wisdom successfully laid an egg.  Unfortunately, this chick did not fledge, as not all eggs will survive to fledging every year.”

Information from the Facebook page of the Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and here.

Read more about Wisdom in numerous articles posted to ACAP Latest News over the last decade or so.

You can now follow the 2025/26 breeding season for Laysan Albatrosses on Midway via a live “albicam”.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 25 November 2025

Swakopmund is a coastal town situated on the edge of the Namib Desert

The Fifteenth Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee (AC15) will be held from Monday 1 to Friday 5 June 2026, in Swakopmund, Namibia.

Meetings of the Population and Conservation Status Working Group and the Seabird Bycatch Working Group will precede AC15, PaCSWG9 on Monday 25 May, and SBWG13 from Wednesday 27 to Friday 29 May.  A joint SBWG13/PaCSWG9 meeting will be held on Tuesday 26 May to discuss cross-cutting issues.  A Heads of Delegation meeting will be convened on Sunday 31 May in the late afternoon/evening.

The deadlines for submission and distribution of meeting documents for AC15 and the Working Group meetings are:

23 January 2026  Draft agenda for AC15 (and Working Groups) distributed by the Secretariat
24 February 2026  Inclusion of new items in the meeting agendas
26 March 2026  Revised draft agendas for AC15, and Working Group meetings distributed
26 March 2026  Submission of AC15 Working Papers and Working Group Papers requiring translation (only the abstracts of WG papers will be translated, however, full documents are required by this deadline)
11 April 2026  Submission of AC15 Information Papers and Working Group Information Papers
25 April 2026  Meeting documents distributed in all working languages by the Secretariat (by publication on the ACAP website).

The draft agenda for AC15 as reviewed by AC14 is provided in Attachment 1.  Draft agendas for PaCSWG9, SBWG13, and the joint SBWG13/PaCSWG9 meeting will be provided by 23 January 2026.

The deadlines for submission of requests for Observer status to attend AC15 and the Working Group meetings are:

24 February 2026  Deadline for submission of written requests for observer status by international bodies and non-international bodies
26 March 2026  International bodies and non-international bodies advised if their request for observer status has been approved.

Information on the venue and accommodation will be provided in Meeting Circular No. 2.

ACAP Secretariat, 28 November 2025 

Heard Island, photograph by Barbara Wienecke

The Australian Senator The Hon Murray Watt, Minister for the Environment and Water and the Hon Julie Collins MP, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry have announced that testing has confirmed the presence of the H5 high pathogenicity avian influenza (H5 bird flu) in samples collected from Southern Elephant Seals Mirounga leonina on Heard Island – a sub-Antarctic Australian external territory.

“Samples were collected after Australian Antarctic Program scientists observed unusual levels of mortality in elephant seals during a recent management voyage to Heard Island.  Testing was conducted by the CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong after the samples were securely packaged and arrived in Australia on Monday 17 November aboard RSV Nuyina.”

Wildlife ecologists taking samples from deceased animals at Atlas Cove, Heard Island, photograph by Rowena Hannaford

“Testing confirmed the presence of H5N1 high pathogenicity avian influenza clade 2.3.4.4b virus in these samples.  There were no observations of unusual mortality in other species present on the island, including penguins and other seabirds.  A second voyage to Heard Island, scheduled to arrive late December, will be important to gather further information about wildlife health.”

High pathogenicity avian influenza has been spreading around the islands of the Southern Ocean, affecting seabirds as well as elephant seals.  First recorded in the South Atlantic sub-Antarctic, it has more recently been confirmed on the southern Indian Ocean’s Marion Island (South Africa) and France’s Possession, Crozets and Kerguelen Islands, and now from Heard. It has not yet been reported from Australia’s Macquarie Island or New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands, both to the east of Heard Island.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 27 November 2025

“My first painting of the 2025-2026 Royal family”, artwork by Gill Winter, photograph from the Department of Conservation

A new colour-banded pair of Endangered Northern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea sanfordi in the mainland colony within the Pukekura/Taiaroa Head Nature Reserve, South Island, New Zealand has been chosen to be the subject of the popular Royal Cam for the 2025/26 breeding season.

 The Royal Cam female for 2025/26 shows her colour bands while incubating her fertile egg, photograph from the Department of Conservation

“WYL [male, white yellow lime colour band] and BOK [female, blue orange black] who raised a chick at Top Flat Track during 2024 are the new Royal Cam pair.  They are nesting at Plateau this season.  Their fertile egg was laid on the 6th of November and will be incubated for an average of 79 days before hatching.”

A candled Northern Royal Albatross egg shows the embryo and blood vessels signifying it is fertile, photograph from the Department of Conservation

“Egg laying is nearly over, and many eggs are now being candled to check for fertility.  Candling is the term used to describe shining a light through the eggshell.  This is best done after 10 days for [albatross] eggs.  Parents take turns incubating their large, single egg for the next 2.5 months until the chick hatches.  Incubation stints can be quite short at the beginning and the end of the egg’s incubation but often become quite long during the middle as they need to find enough food for themselves and the new chick to come.”

Information from the Facebook groups of the Royal Albatross Centre and Royal Cam Albatross Group New Zealand.

Read about the intensive management procedures followed in the mainland colony here.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 26 November 2025