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

Joanna Pierre (Johanna Pierre Environmental Consulting Ltd, Naenae, New Zealand) has produced a final report for the Conservation Services Programme of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation that recommends buoy deployments to reduce haul captures and improving fish waste management practices.

The report’s Executive Summary follows:

‘Seabird captures in longline fisheries may occur on the set, soak or haul. Bycatch reduction measures are best developed, tested and implemented for reducing seabird captures occurring during longline sets. Measures affecting the nature and extent of haul captures, and mitigation approaches to reduce those captures, are not well-known. Further, the difficulty of accurately identifying captures as occurring on the haul means that live seabird captures are typically used as a proxy for haul captures in bycatch datasets.

A global review shows four broad categories of mitigation used during longline hauling: physical barriers, measures that reduce the attractiveness of the haul area, deterrents, and operational approaches that are part of fishing. Of devices that operate as physical barriers to seabirds, bird exclusion devices, tori lines and towed buoys have been tested and proven effective in reducing seabird interactions with hauled longline gear. Discharging fish waste such that seabirds are not attracted to the hauling bay is another effective measure, and seabird abundance around vessels is reduced by retaining fish waste during hauling. While a number of deterrents and ad hoc or reactive approaches to reducing haul captures have been discussed in the literature, these have generally not been empirically tested.

Information collected by government fisheries observers on 73 bottom longline and 60 surface longline trips that have occurred since 1 October 2012 on New Zealand vessels < 34 m in overall length showed that most of these measures are in place here. However, implementation may be limited to a small number of vessels (e.g. one bottom longliner used a tori line and two surface longliners used a buoy to reduce seabird interactions with gear at hauling). Implementation may also not be consistent amongst vessels in a fleet, or on the same vessel between trips (e.g., for fish waste management, where some skippers retained all waste until after hauling or discharged when hooks were well below the sea surface, whilst others discharged used baits directly back into the hauling bay as the line was pulled in). This variation in practices creates consequent variation in haul capture risks. Further, the information already available on vessel operations in New Zealand is sufficient to enable actions to reduce haul capture risks.

Fisher and observer records returned from smaller-vessel New Zealand longline fisheries since 1 October 2009 show that 19 – 32% and 12 – 15% of seabird captures were live, and so likely to have occurred on the haul, for bottom and surface longline respectively. Reports of live-captured petrels and shearwaters were more common than albatross captures in datasets for bottom longline fisheries overall. However, these data are numerically dominated by captures reported from Fisheries Management Area (FMA) 1 (where no albatross captures were documented). Albatross captures were reported from bottom longline fisheries in other areas. Across the regions where surface longline fisheries occur, albatrosses dominate capture reports. In both fisher and observer datasets, and for both fishing methods, single live captures per trip were most common. This suggests that implementing reactive mitigation approaches after a live-capture event has occurred will not deliver the greatest possible reduction in haul captures.

Recommended next steps to progress haul mitigation work in smaller-vessel bottom longline fisheries include prioritising mitigation efforts in FMA 1, given the relatively large numbers of captures of high risk seabirds reported there. For surface longline fisheries, a fleet-level approach is recommended, given vessels are often mobile amongst FMAs due to the highly migratory nature of target fish species and relatively smaller number of vessels involved (less than 40). Mitigation efforts should include exploring device deployments (e.g. buoys) to reduce haul captures, and improving the quality and consistency of fish waste management practices that minimise capture risks during hauling. While sufficient information exists to progress mitigation approaches, recommendations are also provided for enhancing data collection to improve knowledge and understanding of the nature and extent of haul captures in New Zealand’s smaller-vessel longline fisheries.”

With thanks to Barry Baker.

Reference:

Pierre, J.P. 2018.  Mitigating seabird captures during hauling on smaller longline vessels.  [Naenae ]: JPEC Ltd.  49 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 15 June 2018

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) at Kingston in Tasmania holds a weekly seminar programme open to the public where it showcases the work of the Australian Antarctic Program.  This month’s lecture “The Secret Lives of Southern Giant Petrels” is presented by Barbara Wienecke (AAD) on the 14th and 15th on behalf of her co-workers John van den Hoff, John McKinlay, Sasa Otovic and Madalyn Riley.  Barbara is a seabird ecologist who has studied mainly penguins over the years.  Her seminar focuses on a study of Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus in Antarctica  that was based on images obtained from automated cameras that operated all year long.

The lecture’s abstract follows:

“Southern Giant Petrels (SGPs) are the largest flying birds that breed in Antarctica.  Although they have a circumpolar distribution, only four small colonies are known in East Antarctica; three of those are in the Australian Antarctic Territory and all are located in Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs).  Each ASPA has a management [plan] that is reviewed every few years.  Since these birds are easily disturbed by the presence of humans, we are trying to find non-intrusive ways to obtain data that help to determine whether the management plans are successful in protecting the values of the Areas.  This talk reports on the efforts to test the utility of automated camera systems — already successfully deployed near Adélie penguin colonies — to collect data on the phenology of SGPs and the potential to monitor these birds long term with minimal human impact in a cost effective way.  Automated cameras were deployed at Hawker Island (near Davis station) and at Nelly Island (near Casey station).  We analysed of information from images obtained over a 3-year period and compared our findings between the two islands.  The cameras allow us to gain interesting insights into the behaviours of SGPs and deliver some beautiful images as well!”

Read more about the automated cameras here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 14 June 2018

Hansy Alonso (Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Lisbon, Portugal) and colleagues have published in the journal Progress in Oceanography on the fish diet of Cory’s Shearwaters Calonectris borealis (Least Concern) from the Selvagens.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The distribution of many marine organisms is still poorly understood, particularly in oceanic regions. Seabirds, as aerial predators which cover extensive areas across the oceans, can potentially be used to enhance our knowledge on the distribution and abundance of their prey. In this study, we combined tracking data and dietary data from individual Cory’s shearwaters Calonectris borealis (n = 68) breeding in Selvagens archipelago, Madeira, Portugal, during the chick-rearing periods of 2011 and 2016, in order to infer prey origin within shearwaters’ main foraging areas. The digestion state of each prey item in the diet was assessed and classified; and compared to digestion states from known prey items fed to captive birds. In a novel approach, we combined tracking data with information on the prey digestion duration and data on the transit times from foraging grounds to the colony to estimate the location of prey capture. We found a consistent heterogeneity in prey distribution across four different marine domains: Selvagens, deep-sea, seamounts, and continental shelf. In oceanic areas, the chub mackerel Scomber colias, the main prey of Cory’s shearwaters, was strongly associated with seamounts and insular shelves, whereas oceanic species like pilot-fish, flying-squid, flying-fish were clearly associated with deep-sea waters. Sardines Sardina pilchardus, anchovies Engraulis encrasicolus and other coastal species were associated with the African shelf. Prey origin assignment was robust across three different sets of assumptions, and was also supported by information on the digestion state of prey collected over a large independent sampling period (671 samples, collected in 2008–2010). The integration of fine-scale dietary and foraging trip data from marine predators provides a new framework to gain insights into the distribution and abundance of prey species in poorly known oceanic areas.”

Cory's Shearwater, photograph by John Graham

Reference:

Alonso, H., Granadeiro, J.P., Dias, M.P., Catry, T. & Catry, P. 2018.  Fine-scale tracking and diet information of a marine predator reveals the origin and contrasting spatial distribution of prey.  Progress in Oceanography 162: 1-12.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 13 June 2018