The Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena is a globally Critical Endangered species that is at risk of extinction due to the combined effects of longline mortality and chick mortality leading to low breeding success on Gough Island, its main breeding site, caused by introduced House Mice Mus musculus. As a consequence a poison-bait drop on the island by helicopter is planned for next year to attempt to eradicate the mice.

Mice attack a Tristan Albatross chick at night on Gough Island, photograph by Ross Wanless

Researchers currently on the island have recently completed the annual whole-island count during the incubation stage of Tristan Albatross nests.  A total of 1446 occupied nests was counted in five days of surveying (click here).

A round-island count of post-downy chicks will be undertaken in September, so that annual production and breeding success for the biennially-breeding species may be estimated.

Read more about the planned mouse eradication project here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 20 February 2018

The Pacific Seabird Group’s 45th Annual Meeting will be held at the at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur in La Paz, Mexico over 21-24 February 2018.

Presentations on ACAP-listed species are listed below as extracted from the meeting’s abstract book, now online. Note only the first author cited is listed. More presentations may cover ACAP-listed species that were not named in the abstract texts. For co-authors, contact addresses and abstracts on fisheries bycatch and on other procellariform species, including many on gadfly petrels, shearwaters and storm petrels, please consult the abstract book.

Josh Adams: DIVING BEHAVIOR OF PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATERS (ARDENNA CREATOPUS) REARING CHICKS ON ISLA MOCHA, CHILE

Ryan Carle: CHILEAN PURSE-SEINE FISHERY OVERLAP AND RISK OF BYCATCH AMONG PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATERS ARDENNA CREATOPUS BREEDING ON ISLA MOCHA

Jane Dolliver: APPLYING CHANGE DETECTION AND MULTI-SPECTRAL IMAGE PROCESSING TOOLS TO CENSUS [sic] NESTING ALBATROSSES FROM SATELLITE IMAGERY

Julio Hernández-Montoya : LAYSAN ALBATROSS (PHOEBASTRIA IMMUTABILIS) ON GUADALUPE ISLAND, MEXICO: POPULATION STATUS, DISTRIBUTION, SOCIAL ATTRACTION AND ADVANCES TOWARDS THE ERADICATION OF FERAL CAT

Kathryn Huyvaert: FORTY YEARS AND COUNTING: UPDATE ON THE ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF THE CRITICALLY ENDANGERED WAVED ALBATROSS

Jason Jannot: CRYPTIC SEABIRD MORTALITY ON U.S. WEST COAST PACIFIC HAKE FISHING VESSELS [Black-footed Albatross]

Caitlin Kroeger: CORTICOSTERONE AS A BEHAVIORAL DRIVER AND NUTRIENT RESPONSE IN TWO SYMPATRIC ALBATROSSES

Verónica López: TOWARDS A PACIFIC MONITORING NETWORK FOR A HIGHLY MIGRATORY SPECIES, THE PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATER

Yutzil Lora-Cabrera: HABITAT SUITABILITY FOR LAYSAN ALBATROSS AND BLACK-VENTED SHEARWATER IN THE MEXICAN PACIFIC OCEAN

Daisuke Ochi: PREDICTING BYCATCH FOR BLACK-FOOTED AND LAYSAN ALBATROSSES BY JAPANESE LONGLINE FISHERIES WITH SPATIO-TEMPORAL OCEANOGRAPHIC FACTORS.

John Peschon: A SUMMARY OF ALBATROSS BAND RECOVERY DATA IN THE HAWAII DEEP AND SHALLOW SET LONGLINE FISHERIES

John Peschon: A SUMMARY OF SEABIRD INTERACTIONS IN THE HAWAII DEEP AND SHALLOW SET LONGLINE FISHERIES IN 2016 [Black-footed & Laysan Albatrosses]

Stacy Schuur: WHAT MIGHT YOU DISCOVER USING ARCHIVED SEABIRD EGGS [Phoebastria albatrosses]

Cristián Suazo: SEABIRD BYCATCH IN PURSE SEINE FISHERIES: STATUS OF KNOWLEDGE AND MITIGATION MEASURES [Pink-footed Shearwater & others]

Laura Todd: ADDRESSING SEABIRD BYCATCH IN THE PACIFIC COAST GROUNDFISH FISHERY: COLLABORATION LEADS TO FEASIBLE CONSERVATION MEASURES [Black-footed & Short-tailed Albatrosses]

Short-tailed Albatross, photograph by Hiroshi Hasegawa

Click here to view the list of sessions and symposia. A three-hour meeting of the North Pacific Albatross Working Group will be held during the annual meeting.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 19 February 2018

Susan Waugh (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand,) and colleagues published open access last year in the online journal PLoS ONE on globally Near Threatened Buller's Albatrosses Thalassarche bulleri feeding their chicks the remains of juvenile Sooty Shearwaters Ardenna grisea, also a globally Near Threatened species.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Albatrosses are flexible and adaptable predators, relying on live prey as well as carrion. Use of predictable food sources and reliance on human-produced resources are well-known trait in long-range feeders like albatrosses and petrels. Breeding Buller's albatrosses studied at Solander I. (Hautere), New Zealand fed their chicks the remains of sooty shearwater juveniles (tītī in Māori), which are harvested from nearby muttonbirding sites. Evidence of this food type was found at over 10% of nests examined, and 17±40% birds that were fitted with GPS loggers visited muttonbirding sites in this and previous studies. Muttonbirding is a traditional practice that has continued for centuries, with up to 120 tonnes of offal discharged to the sea annually during the present day harvest. It coincides with the energetically-demanding early chick period for the albatrosses. Our finding suggests that the offal may be an important, but overlooked element in the albatross diet. As an important supplementary food for the albatrosses it is likely to have contributed to the 3% per annum growth of their populations since the first comprehensive population surveys in 1969.”

Buller's Albatross, photograph by Paul Sagar

Read a popular account of the paper here.

Reference:

Waugh, S.M., Poupart, T.A., Miskelly, C.M., Stahl, J.-C. & Arnould, J.P.Y. 2017.  Human exploitation assisting a threatened species? The case of muttonbirders and Buller's albatross. PLoS ONE 12(4): e0175458.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 16 February 2018

Henri Weimerskirch (CEBC, CNRS - Université de La Rochelle, Villiers en Bois, France) and colleagues have published in the journal Polar Biology this month on behavioural and physiological responses to drones (UAVs) flying over sub-Antarctic seabirds.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Drones and unmanned aerial vehicles are increasingly used in research on wildlife. Their wide applications can also give interesting insights into habitat use and population distribution. However, the disturbance they might be responsible for, on species and especially in protected areas has yet to be investigated. We assessed and compared the behavioural response of 11 southern seabird species at the Crozet Islands, Southern Indian Ocean, to drone approaches at specific altitudes. We first show that the behavioural response differed between species depending on the altitude of the drone approach. At 50 m of altitude, only one of the studied species showed a detectable reaction, whereas at 10 m, most species showed strong behavioural postures of stress. Adult penguins breeding in large colonies, and some albatross species showed little behavioural response even when the drone was as close as 3 m, whereas other species such as giant petrels or cormorants appeared highly sensitive to drone approaches. Among King Penguins, although incubating adults showed little signs of behavioural stress, non-breeding adults and fledglings in crèches exhibited strong behavioural responses to the drone approach. Monitoring heart rate allowed us to investigate the link between behavioural and physiological response to that specific potential stressor in king penguins. Whereas we confirmed the expected link between physiological and behavioural response in chicks, breeding adults showed no behavioural sign of stress but had a significant increase in heart rate, the relative increase being higher than in chicks. All together these results have important implications for the conservation of species and should be helpful for future legislations on the use of drones.”

Wandering Albatross, photograph by Linda Clokie

Reference:

Weimerskirch, H., Prudor, A. & Schull, Q. 2018. Flights of drones over sub-Antarctic seabirds show species- and status-specific behavioural and physiological responses. Polar Biology 41: 259-266.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 15 February 2018