The 27th International Ornithological Congress (IOCongress2018) will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada over 19-26 August.  The Congress is held under the auspices of the International Ornithologists' Union.

Peter Ryan, Director of the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, South Africa will give a plenary address entitled Seabird Conservation - a Southern Hemisphere Perspective.  Click here for a list of all the plenary speakers and titles of their presentations.

A round-table discussion on seabird research and conservation in the Pacific Ocean will be held at the Congress.

Globally Endangered Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross on Prince Edward Island in the Southern Ocean, photograph by Peter Ryan

Abstracts for "traditional paper posters" may be submitted until 5 July (click here), providing registration has first been completed.  The full programme for the congress will be released this month.

“For more than 100 years, the quadrennial International Ornithological Congress has provided the platform where ornithologists from all over the world meet to share up-to-date research and conservation accomplishments and concerns. These congresses have been held in different geographical locations each time, not only to highlight regional efforts but also to facilitate participation for those who are unable to travel long distances to attend.”

John Cooper, ACAP information Officer, 07 June 2018

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Expert Group on Birds and Marine Mammals (SCAR-EGBAMM) will hold meetings at Polar 2018 (at the time of the biennial Open Science Conference of SCAR, being held jointly with the International Arctic Science Committee) in Davos, Switzerland this month.

On 15 June a workshop on the theme “Polar wildlife – connecting ecology, health and disease issues in a changing world” will be held.

“The aim of this workshop is to identify key scientific knowledge gaps in wildlife health and disease and to foster new research initiatives and collaborations at the interface between ecology and diseases in Polar Regions, (Arctic, Antarctic and sub-Antarctic).  We will discuss the importance of including parasites and disease issues in biodiversity observatory networks in polar areas. The implications of some wildlife diseases for human populations in polar areas will also be addressed. Twenty years ago the first workshop about wildlife diseases in Antarctic provided several recommendations on research and monitoring needs. Main outputs of this workshop will include updating the recommendations from the 1998 Antarctic wildlife disease workshop, discussion of protocols for wildlife disease and health surveillance in both Arctic and Antarctic, and identification of major research and monitoring gaps for wildlife health in both regions.”

Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross - susceptible to disease on Amsterdam Island, photograph by Peter Ryan

SCAR-EGBAMM will also hold a meeting on 16 June in the Congress Centre at Davos.  An open discussion on potential new directions for EG-BAMM is planned.

With thanks to Yan Ropert-Coudert, SCAR-EGBAMM Secretary.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 06 June 2018

The University of Réunion Island in St Denis, La Réunion will host the Third Island Biology Conference over 8-13 July 2019 (click here).  International conferences of the Society for Island Biology are held every two or three years. The two previous conferences were held in Hawaii, USA in 2014 and in the Açores, Portugal in 2016.  The theme for the third conference is “Connecting the major three oceans in the Malagasy Region hotspot: emphasizing large biodiversity rich islands and conservation studies of islands.”

A seabird session at the conference and a side event organized by the Indian Ocean Seabird Group have been proposed.

“As seabirds are both marine and terrestrial animals, sessions on seabird ecology, conservation, biogeography, interactions with island ecosystems would be highly relevant. For this reason, we are thinking about proposing a seabird session at this conference.  If anyone is interested in participating or organising this session, please let us know!

Also, we think that this conference would be a wonderful opportunity to organise the 2019 Indian Ocean Seabird Conference, as a side event of the Island Biology Conference.  Again, if anyone is interested in participating or organising this side event please let us know!"

News from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Indian Ocean Seabird Group, writing in the IOSG Newsletter No. 4.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 05 June 2018

Maria Cristina Fossi (Department of Physical Sciences, Earth and Environment, University of Siena, Italy) and colleagues have reviewed plastic ingestion and entangled in cetaceans and Near Threatened Flesh-footed Shearwaters Ardenna carneipes in the open-access Frontiers in Marine Science.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Impacts of debris on marine fauna occur throughout the marine ecosystems, with adverse impacts documented on over 1,400 species; impacts can be divided into those arising from entanglement, and those from ingestion. Ingestion of, and entanglement in, debris has been documented in over 60% of all cetacean species. Seabirds are also impacted by debris predominately through entanglement and ingestion, with the number of species negatively impacted increasing from 138 to 174 over the past two decades. In the marine environment, cetaceans and seabirds are widely regarded as reliable sentinels due to their position near the top of the marine food web, conspicuous nature, and reliance on marine resources; for this reason, this paper is focused on seabirds and cetaceans as sentinels of ocean change. In particular, two case studies are considered in relation to different levels of environmental anthropogenic impact: the cetaceans of the Mediterranean Sea and seabirds of eastern Australia. Here we describe two recent studies used to diagnose the toxicological stress related to debris-associated pressures in cetaceans and seabirds. These studies highlight the diversity and scale of impacts being felt by marine species and the role these organisms can play in our society as charismatic sentinels of ocean health. Seabirds and marine mammals are exposed, in these key areas, to a variety of adversities that potentially decrease their survival or reproductive success. These include weather, food shortages, predators, competitors, parasites, disease, and human-induced effects and plastic pollution. Each factor affects seabirds and marine mammals in a different way, but more importantly, factors can also interact and create impacts far greater than any one factor alone. The Australian and Mediterranean case studies presented here emphasize the need to consider multiple sources of mortality when developing management plans for the conservation of vulnerable species.”

Plastic fragments get removed from the gut of a Flesh-footed Shearwater, photograph by Ian Hutton

Reference:

Fossi, M.C., Panti, C., Baini, M. & Lavers. J.K. 2018. ^. A review of plastic-associated pressures: cetaceans of the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Australian shearwaters as case studies.  Frontiers in Marine Science doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00173/.

ACAP Information Officer, 04 June 2018