A Buller's Albatross effortlessly soars over the ocean close to the Chatham Islands in New Zealand; photograph by Enzo M. R. Reyes

The Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) is excited to announce, “Marine Protected Areas – Safeguarding our Oceans”, as the theme for this year’s World Albatross Day (WAD2024), to be celebrated on 19 June 2024. 

Albatrosses are the ultimate ocean wanderers, spending most of their lives at sea traversing vast distances across the globe in search of food such as fish, squid and krill. This year, World Albatross Day will focus on the connection between albatrosses and the ocean, and highlight how Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can help improve the conservation status of these magnificent birds. 

MPAs provide levels of protection for the species and ecosystems located within their defined geographical boundaries through the legal framework that determines the type of economic activity (if any) that can occur within them. They can be designated by governments within their own territorial waters, and now, with the landmark signature of the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction or 'BBNJ treaty', by 84 nations, the creation of MPAs in waters commonly known as the High Seas will become possible. 

The establishment of MPAs can assist in improving the conservation status of albatrosses through the protection of the immediate surrounds of their breeding localities and key regions across their migratory ranges, and through the management of activities permitted within them, such as fishing. 

New Zealand’s Near Threatened Buller's Albatross Thalassarche bulleri and the Vulnerable Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus have been chosen as the featured species for 2024’s World Albatross Day celebrations. 

In 2024, ACAP will mark 20 years since coming into force. Over these two decades, the Agreement’s 13 Parties have continually strived to improve the conservation status of its listed albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters. 

To acknowledge the Agreement’s 20^th year, a commemorative World Albatross Day logo has been designed by South African Graphic Designer, Geoffry Tyler. Geoffry has worked with ACAP previously and is behind the design of the original World Albatross Day logo which has been in use since the inaugural celebration in 2020 under the theme, “Eradicating Island Pests”. 

An official World Albatross Day poster in ACAP’s three official languages of English, French and Spanish will be released in the lead up to the event and will be made available at high resolution to download at the ACAP website.  New infographics in the ACAP Species series for the two featured albatrosses will also be available.

Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) is once again supporting World Albatross Day with artworks produced by their nature and wildlife artists. Project #47 will commence on 27 January and run for two months until the end of March. 

The ocean, which covers more than 70% Earth’s surface, is facing increased pressures from climate change and human activity including, overfishing, deep sea mining, and pollution. The celebration of World Albatross Day on 19 June will be a chance to raise awareness of these incredible birds and put a spotlight on MPAs as one of the tools that can help us to safeguard albatrosses and the wider marine environment, ensuring the rich and biologically diverse array of life sustained by the ocean thrives for generations to come. 

25 January 2024

Black-footed Albatrosses nesting on the shores of Midway Atoll, a low-lying Hawaiian island vulnerable to climate change and the catalyst behind the translocation project which is aiming to establish a new colony on Mexico's remote Guadalupe Island. Photograph courtesy of Pacific Rim Conservation

The establishment of a new colony of globally Near Threatened Black-footed Albatrosses Phoebastria nigripes on Mexico’s Guadalupe Island has been given a boost with the arrival of 36 fertilised eggs from Hawaii’s Midway Atoll. 

The dramatic move is part of an ongoing conservation effort to ensure the long-term survival of Black-footed Albatrosses whose population is at risk to climate change due to 97% of their breeding grounds being low-lying atolls in the USA’s North-western Hawaiian Islands. 

The project is managed by an international group of organisations including Pacific Rim Conservation (PRC), Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas (GECI), and Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, with coordinated support from the federal governments of both countries. 

The project’s translocation team has been in action since early January when they first collected viable eggs from nesting pairs on Midway. The viable eggs were then transported to Guadalupe Island and placed with nesting pairs of Laysan Albatrosses P. immutabilis whose egg had died. Once hatched, the Laysan pairs will raise the chicks as their own until they fledge.

Ninety-three Black-footed Albatrosses have so far successfully fledged from Guadalupe Island as part of the programme, with the first translocated albatrosses expected to return to the island by 2026 according to Pacific Rim Conservation.

ACAP Latest News has been reporting on the project since the first translocations took place in 2020, and an in-depth article about the project is also available at the Audubon website, here.  

24 January 2024

The latest ACAP Species Infographic released in English last month and the fourteenth in the series, is for the Near Threatened Grey Petrel Procellaria cinerea.  It is the first to be produced for an ACAP-listed petrel, the previous 13 infographics all being for albatrosses.  It is now available from today in all three official ACAP languages of English, French and Spanish.  The Grey Petrel infographic has been sponsored by the Australian Antarctic Program.

The ACAP Species Infographic series has been designed to help inform the public, including school learners, of the threats faced by albatrosses and petrels and what is being and can be done to combat them.  They serve to complement the more detailed and referenced ACAP Species Assessments, the concise and illustrated ACAP Species Summaries and the ACAP Photo Essay series.  English and Portuguese* language versions of all the infographics produced to date are available to download here.  French and Spanish versions can be found in their respective language menus for the website under Infographies sur les espèces and Infografía sobre las especies.

All the 14 infographics produced to date may be freely downloaded at a high resolution to allow for printing professionally in two poster sizes (approximately A2 and A3).  Please note they are only being made available for personal use or when engaging in activities that will aid in drawing attention to the conservation crisis faced by the world’s albatrosses and petrels – when ACAP will be pleased to receive a mention.  They should not be used for personal gain.

One more ACAP Species Infographic is currently in production, for the Vulnerable White-chinned Petrel P. aequinoctialis, which will also be produced in Portuguese.  A further five species have been sponsored, with work on them to commence this year.

The ACAP Species Infographics have all been created by Thai illustrator Namasri ‘Namo’ Niumim from Bangkok.  Namo is a graduate of the School of Architecture and Design, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design.

With thanks to ‘Pep’ Arcos, Jonathon Barrington, Karine Delord, Johannes Fischer, Graham Parker, Richard Phillips and Peter Ryan for their help.

*Being produced for the six ACAP-listed species that regularly visit waters off Brazil.  To date, those produced are for the Tristan Albatross D. dabbenena and the Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 23 January 2024

The new predator-proof fence in the Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, photograph by US Fish & Wildlife Service

Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis are breeding again in the North Pacific.  The vast majority breeds on the low-lying atolls of the North-Western Hawaiian Islands where they at risk to flooding caused by storms, considered to be more of an issue with climate change-induced sea level rise.  However, on the inhabited high Hawaiian islands of Kauai and Oahu the few relatively small colonies are safe from sea level rise, acting as a level of insurance for the Near Threatened species. News is in on the fortunes of Laysan Albatrosses in two of these colonies that are protected by predator-proof fences.

Kauai

The record number of 153 pairs of Laysan Albatrosses breeding in the 2023/24 season – 20 more than in the previous season - in the Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge on the Hawaiian island of Kauai will have an enhanced chance of a high breeding success.  This is due to the recent completion of a 3.4-km-long predator-roof fence surrounding 68 ha that will keep feral cats and pigs, stray dogs and rodents down to, it is stated, the size of a baby House Mouse, away from the birds.  In the 2022/23 season pigs gained entry and destroyed nearly 70 albatross nests, prior to completion of the fence (click here).  Any remaining predators caught within the fenced area are now being removed.

UPDATE: The total occupied nest count was 157. 131 eggs have survived as hatching time approaches. The "natural decline is due to infertile eggs, abandonment of nests, and predation". Information from the Facebook page of  the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.

A feral pig approaches an incubating Laysan Albatross at night in the Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge on 23 December 2022, trail camera photograph by Pacific Rim Conservation

More information comes from USFWS Volunteer Louise Barnfield in the December issue in Wild Times, newsletter of the Kilauea Point Natural History Association.

“Last week, Kīlauea Point NWR participated in the annual mōlī (Laysan albatross) egg swap with a team of biologists from the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), located on the west side of Kauaʻi.  Due to the potential for airstrikes, mōlī in the PMRF colony are a risk to aircraft and to themselves.  Therefore, their biologists are employing multiple approaches as they work to reduce the size of their colony.  For this year’s egg swap, 23 fertile eggs were removed from the PMRF mōlī colony and transported to Kīlauea Point NWR where they replaced 23 non-viable eggs within the Refuge’s two colonies.  Through a process called “candling”, biologists can identify eggs that are non-viable – either because they were not fertilized or are damaged.  They can then “swap” the eggs and our adoptive nesters will then get to raise ex-PMRF chicks, which will imprint upon the safe colonies at Kīlauea Point NWR and eventually return to our hatching sites, rather than PMRF.”

 
A Laysan Albatross incubates within the Kaena Point Natural Area Reserve, photograph by Pacific Rim Conservation

In complete contrast, the construction of a wrought iron security fence elsewhere on Kauai has led to the death by entanglement of a colour-banded (white V389) Laysan Albatross, known as Hoʻokipa (click here).

"Hoʻokipa, the first Laysan albatross to return to nesting within an ecological restoration area makai of the Turtle Bay golf course, died last month after getting stuck in an iron fence near her new nest at Marconi Point"

Oahu

Over on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, Laysan Albatrosses are also doing well behind a predator-proof fence around the Kaena Point Natural Area Reserve.  The environmental NGO, Pacific Rim Conservation reports on its Facebook page that there are “106 mōlī nests and counting at Ka'ena Point- a new record!  2023 marks the 20th year that we have monitored Laysan Albatrosses on O'ahu”.  Laysan Albatrosses also breed within the translocation site protected by a predator-proof fence in Oahu’s James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge. A more recent Facebook post by Pacific Rim Conservation has a record of 156 occupied nests for Kaena Point and the nearby Kuaokala Game Management Area combined.

A colour-banded Laysan Albatross rises on its egg on Isla Guadalupe, December 2023, photograph by Felix Jimenez Roja, GECI

FOOTNOTE.  Across the Pacific in Mexico, Isla Guadalupe is also having a record year, according to the Mexican NGO Conservación de Islas (GECI) on its Facebook page: "The end of the year is near and Guadalupe Island is painted white thanks to the arrival of the Laysan Albatross. So far we have registered over 400 nests on the main island breaking the historic record on the island".  In 2009 a census yielded 457 pairs - but this seemed to include the nearby Islote Zapato and Islote Negro, with perhaps 50 pairs each.

 John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 18 January 2024, updated 21 January 2024