The documentary film ALBATROSS was offered as a “permanent gift to the world” on World Oceans Day this month, when it was screened at the United Nations, for free viewing and downloading (click here).

A Laysan Albatross regurgitates plastic fragments to its chick

Corpse of a Laysan Albatross on Midway showing its stomach contents of plastic artefacts, including a cigarette lighter

Photographs by Manuel Maqueda and Chris Jordan

Filmed at Midway Atoll in the North Pacific it concentrates on the ingestion of plastic artefacts by ACAP-listed and globally Near Threatened Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis.

Find more information on the 97-minute film here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 21 June 2018

Kalinka Rexer-Huber (Parker Conservation, Dunedin, New Zealand) and colleagues have submitted a draft report to the Conservation Services Programme of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation on the demographics of the globally Near Threatened White-capped Albatross Thalassarche steadi on Disappointment Island, part of the Auckland Islands.

The report’s Executive Summary follows:

“The white-capped albatross Thalassarche cauta steadi is a biennially-breeding seabird endemic to New Zealand. The species ranks highly in assessments of the risk of commercial fisheries to New Zealand seabird populations, but there is some uncertainty around key life-history parameters. The overarching objective of this study is to obtain robust estimates of white-capped albatross demographic parameters.

To estimate key parameters, including adult survival, recruitment and population trends, we established a marked population of breeding birds at Disappointment Island, Auckland Islands (the largest population of white-capped albatross). We report on field work in 2018 to resight banded albatrosses and increase the number of banded birds in the study area. Three years of recaptures are not sufficient for robust demographic rate estimates, but enable some exploratory analyses. To assess how many further resighting visits might be required for demographic rate estimates to be suitably precise, we generate preliminary demographic rates from resightings to date (2015–2018) and use these to simulate realistic ‘dummy’ resighting data that build on the real data to date.

A total of 521 breeding white-capped albatrosses have been banded in four annual visits to Disappointment Island 2015–2018. A third of white-capped albatross banded in previous years were resighted in 2018, compared to 22% and 23% in the two previous visits 2016 and 2017. These resighting rates are encouraging, given the short duration of visits (insufficient time for incubating birds to be relieved by mates), and given that the primary focus of the work was on banding, not resighting.

Simulation modelling indicated that the accuracy and precision of all estimated parameters incrementally improves with further consecutive resighting years. Using the example of adult survival, we show that the rate of decrease in the variance of survival estimates was greatest with 1–3 further years of consecutive resighting effort from present.”

White-capped Albatrosses, photograph by Matt Charteris

With thanks to Barry Baker.

Reference:

Rexer-Huber, K., Thompson, D.R. & Parker, G.C. 2018.  Draft White-capped albatross mark-recapture study at Disappointment Island, Auckland Islands. Field season 2018.  Draft Report to Department of Conservation, Conservation Services Programme.  Dunedin: Parker Conservation  15 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 20 June 2018

The field team of the Santos Basin Beach Monitoring Project (Projeto de Monitoramento de Praias da Bacia de Santos) found the corpse of a globally Endangered Atlantic Yellow-Nosed Albatross Thalassarche chlororhynchos on Beach of the English (Praia dos Ingleses), Florianópolis, Santa Caterina Island, Brazil on 10 May this year.

The bird, that appears to have been a juvenile based on a photograph showing an all-black bill, was then necropsied, revealing the stomach contained a large number of fragments of white Styrofoam (closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam), likely to have caused the bird’s demise.

Corpse of the juvenile Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross

The unopened stomach

The Styrofoam fragments are obvious in the opened stomach

The Santos Basin Beach Monitoring Project aims to assess the possible impacts of oil production and disposal activities on birds, turtles and marine mammals by monitoring beaches and conducting veterinary care for live animals and undertaking necropsies of dead animals.

Read more here.

A juvenile Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross was found with a shoe sole in its stomach on a Brazilian shore earlier in the year (click here).  It may be that recently fledged birds are more susceptible to swallowing foreign objects.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 19 June 2018

The Eleventh Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee (AC11) will be held from Monday, 13th to Friday, 17th May 2019, in Florianópolis, Brazil.  A Heads of Delegation meeting will be convened on Sunday, 12th May 2019 in the late afternoon/evening.

Meetings of the Seabird Bycatch Working Group (SBWG), and the Population and Conservation Status Working Group (PaCSWG) will precede AC11 at the same venue (SBWG9 from Monday 6th to Wednesday 8th May, and PaCSWG5 from Thursday 9th to Friday 10th May).

Information on key dates for submission and distribution of meeting documents for AC11 and the Working Group meetings, as well as other relevant information, will be provided in Meeting Circular 1.

Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatrosses are a common visitor to Brazilian waters where they are risk to being caught on longlines, becoming entangled and ingesting plastic

Photograph taken on Gough Island by Andrea Angel & Ross Wanless

Brazil has previously hosted the Agreement; the Second Meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC2) was held in Brasilia in June 2006.  Next year’s Advisory Committee meeting follows on from AC10, held in Wellington, New Zealand in September 2017 and the Sixth Session of the Meeting of Parties (MoP6), held in South Africa’s Kruger National Park last month.  The Seventh Session is due to be held in 2021 in Australia – when ACAP will be 20 years old.

Florianópolis is the capital and second largest city of the State of Santa Catarina in the southern region of Brazil.  It is served by an international airport.  A coastal city situated on Santa Caterina Island with a humid subtropical climate, it has a population of roughly half a million.  The island is connected to the Brazilian mainland by bridges and is known for its many tourist beaches.

Nathan Walker, Chair, ACAP Advisory Committee & Marco Favero, ACAP Executive Secretary, 18 June 2018