The Australasian Seabird Group will host the Third World Seabird Conference, the world’s biggest gathering of marine ornithologists, in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia in 2020.

“It is planned to be held in Hobart city in the spring [austral or boreal?] of 2020. The two previous conferences brought together ~800 delegates from more than 40 countries for presentations, posters, meetings and workshops. It is hoped that some exciting field trips will be developed in conjunction with the conference in both Australia and New Zealand. Keep an eye on the ASG’s website and Twitter account (@AUS_NZ_Seabirds) for further details” (click here).

A pair of Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses on New Zealand's Adams Island, photograph by Colin O'Donnell

The First World Seabird Conference was held in Victoria, Canada in 2010, the second in Cape Town, South Africa in 2015.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 30 October 2017

ACAP Latest News has regularly reported on the Million Dollar Mouse project that led to the attempt to eradicate introduced House Mice Mus musculus on New Zealand’s Antipodes Island. After a period of fund raising and planning, poison bait was dropped by helicopter over the island in July last year.

Now safe from mice? A pair of globally Vulnerable Antipodean Albatrosses Diomedea antipodensis on Antipodes Island, photograph by Erica Sommer

Over a year on with it considered possible the mice have now gone, the Predator Free New Zealand Trust has reported on the next steps:

“At least two mouse breeding seasons after the eradication attempt, a team of two rodent detection dogs and their handlers will work with a small team of monitoring staff to search the island for sign of mice. Monitoring tools may also include ink-tracking cards, wax tags and chew cards designed to show the presence of mice. It would not be possible to efficiently detect the presence of mice prior to this as the island is difficult to get around and the likelihood of detecting one or two individuals is too low. The eradication is a one-off attempt. The result monitoring will show whether it was successful or not and at this stage the result can be declared” (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 27 October 2017

Professor Peter Ryan, since 2014 Director of the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at South Africa’s University of Cape Town has this month been inducted into UCT's prestigious College of Fellows at a ceremony and dinner held earlier this month to “recognise academic staff whose distinguished work deserves special recognition” (click here). UCT’s College of Fellows was established by the UCT Council to recognise distinguished academic work by permanent academic staff.

Peter Ryan in his natural habitat: an uninhabited seabird island in the South Atlantic, photograph by Norman Glass

Peter manages the Institute’s research on albatrosses and petrels at Marion and Gough Islands and at sea in the Southern Ocean within the South African National Antarctic Programme (SANAP), as well as researching and publishing regularly on marine pollution.

Earlier in the year Peter was granted A-rated scientist status by South Africa’s National Research Foundation last month (click here). “A-raters” are researchers who are unequivocally recognised by their peers as leading international scholars in their field for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs. This is the highest accolade in the NRF’s rating system to rank researchers in South Africa and the first to be awarded to an ornithologist.  2017 also saw Peter receiving the Gilchrist Memorial Medal from the South African Network for Coastal and Oceanic Research (SANCOR) (click here).

The fellowship citation follows:

“Professor Peter Ryan is the director of the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, a Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation (DST-NRF) Centre of Excellence at UCT. His research focuses on understanding and managing environmental issues, primarily those that affect birds.

Ryan was born in the UK in 1962 and has had a stellar academic career since school level, when he was silver medallist in the 1979 Mathematics Olympiad. He obtained both his BSc and BSc (Hons) degrees from UCT with distinction and was awarded the Purcell Memorial Prize for the best zoological dissertation at UCT for both his 1986 MSc (which resulted in eight papers [on plastic pollution in seabirds]) and for his PhD (in 1992). After undertaking his postdoctoral studies at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Zoology at UCT in 1993. He rose through the ranks to professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and director of the FitzPatrick Institute in 2014.

Over his career Ryan has authored or co-authored more than 330 peer-reviewed papers (126 as first author) in 88 scientific journals. His main research themes include plastic pollution (35 papers), seabird-fishery interactions and bycatch mitigation (46 papers), seabird monitoring and conservation (40 papers), foraging ecology of seabirds and other marine predators (54 papers), seabird breeding biology (13 papers), other aspects of seabird biology (19 papers), island biology and conservation (45 papers), and avian systematics and evolution (24 papers).

He has also written 12 books, several of which are best sellers; 36 book chapters; and 193 popular and semi-popular articles. He has supervised or co-supervised 19 PhD students, 19 MSc students by dissertation, plus 59 MSc students who are conducting their degrees by coursework and dissertation. Ryan’s H-index is 53 (Google Scholar), and his work has been cited more than 11 300 times (over 5400 times since 2011). He has an A2 rating from the South African National Research Foundation (2017–22).

Ryan is without doubt a leading international expert on the ecology of seabirds (particularly on direct and indirect human impacts on seabird populations), as well as on plastics pollution in the marine environment. His many books and popular articles have also inspired a generation of amateur birders and naturalists. For these many remarkable contributions he richly deserves to be awarded a UCT Fellowship.”

Click here to read a review of Peter’s latest book – on the seabirds of southern Africa.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 October 2017

John Borg (National Museum of Natural History - Vilhena Palace, Mdina, Malta) has published (in English) in the italian journal Avocetta on difficulties in obtaining accurate census figures for three procellariiform species in Malta. One of these, the Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan, has been identified as a potential candidate for ACAP listing.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The Maltese islands host three species of pelagic seabirds, namely: Scopoli`s Shearwater Calonectris diomedea, Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan and Mediterranean Storm-petrel Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis. Annual censuses of the breeding population of the three species have been carried out since 1983. Seabird censuses present some of the most demanding challenges of ornithological studies, and this is exceedingly so when attempts are made in counting the breeding population of underground nesting seabirds such as the shearwaters and storm-petrels. The majority of these species visit land only during the breeding season and do so under cover of darkness. They often nest in inaccessible places or nearly so. At specific periods in the breeding year, the colonies are visited by numerous prospecting and non-breeding birds, greatly inflating the number of birds in the colony.  Faced with all these variables, any figures presented from these censuses can only be zbiology and ecology of the species under study, in many cases, these censuses will result in greatly inflated figures as were recently reported for Malta, Lampedusa and Zembra. These over-estimated figures will inevitably lead to both short and long term negative implications on any conservation efforts undertaken for these species.”

Two rescued Scopoli`s Shearwater fledglings in Malta, photograph by Joe Sultana

Reference:

Borg, J.J. 2017. Interpreting pelagic seabird population numbers in the Maltese Islands. Avocetta 41: 1-4.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 October 2017