The Report of the Seventh Meeting of the Seabird Bycatch Working Group (AC9 Doc 10 Rev 1) held in La Serena, Chile last month is now available on the ACAP website.

The Report of the Third Meeting of the Population and Conservation Status Group (AC9 Doc 09 Rev 1) that took place immediately after the SBWG meeting has also been posted.

Spanish and French translations of the two working group reports will become available in late June/early July.  The Report of the Ninth Meeting of the Advisory Committee which followed on from the two working group meetings in La Serena is to be posted next week.

Attendees at the Ninth Meeting of the ACAP Advisory Committee

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 June 2016

Regular readers of ACAP Latest News over the last five years will be well aware of the devastation that long-introduced House Mice Mus musculus are causing to the birds of Gough Island, including to its near-endemic and Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena (click here).

 Rob Ronconi holds a Tristan Albatross chick badly wounded by mice, it died soon after; photograph by Peter Ryan

Mice attack the rump of a Tristan Albatross chick at night; photograph by Ross Wanless

After an eradication feasibility study conducted in 2008 and the subsequent completion of all the research it recommended, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB, United Kingdom Partner of BirdLife International) has now commenced fund raising for the UK£ 6.1 million considered required to cover all the costs of an eradication campaign by an aerial drop of poison bait from helicopters.  The eradication effort is currently scheduled to take place during the austral winter of 2019.

Read about the Gough Island Restoration Programme and check out a blog with a “call to action”.

Click here for an illustrated information brochure about the eradication programme (a hard copy is available on request) and view the mouse attack video - not for the faint hearted! A donation page has also been set up to receive contributions.

MIPEP's Keith Springer part of the team

The Gough Island Restoration Programme team includes the much-experienced New Zealander Keith Springer as Operational Advisor responsible for co-ordinating logistics, contracts and tendering.  Keith managed the successful Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project (MIPEP) to remove that island's rodents and rabbits.  More recently he was part of Team Rat that has worked to eradicate rodents on South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur)* and is currently the Operational Advisor for the Million Dollar Mouse Project to eradicate House Mice on New Zealand's Antipodes Island, now underway. Keith is due to travel to Gough for the first time with the annual relief of the  South African base on the island this September.  Read more on the UK-New Zealand connection at Gough Island here.

With thanks to John Kelly, International Species Recovery Programme Manager, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK.

Reference:

Parkes, J. 2008.  A Feasibility Study for the Eradication of House Mice from Gough Island.  RSPB Research Report No. 34.  Sandy: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.  51 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 June 2016

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.

The 2016 New Zealand Bird Conference and Annual General Meeting of Birds New Zealand will be held in Napier (Hawkes Bay) over 4 - 6 June. A number of presentations will deal with procellariiform birds.  Abstracts for the two talks on ACAP-listed species, the Buller’s Albatross Thalassarche bulleri and the Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni are given below.

Black Petrel, photograph by Department of Conservation

Elizabeth (Biz) Bell, Claudia Mischler & Nikki McArthur.  Can you hear me?  Using acoustic monitoring to determine the presence and range of black petrels on Great Barrier Island/Aotea, Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island and the Moehau range.

Nocturnal seabirds are ideal candidates for acoustic monitoring because they are highly vocal at their colonies, particularly in the breeding season.  Seabirds have distinct calls, and the signature of these calls can be distinguished to species using acoustic analysis software and archived for future use.  A number of automated acoustic recorders were deployed across Great Barrier Island/Aotea, Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island and the Moehau Range to record calls of black petrels (Procellaria parkinsoni) in the air and on the ground through the 2014/15 and 2015/16 breeding seasons. The recorders were deployed at selected locations at all three sites from late-November and were retrieved before the end of May covering the egg laying, incubation and early chick rearing period of the black petrel breeding season.  Black petrels call on the ground when trying to attract mates to their burrow between October and February with most activity being in November and December.  Calling continues through the night, with peak activity occurring in the first few hours after dark.  The acoustic recorders were programmed to record for one hour each night during the peak period of activity (with times varying at different locations), logging any calls within the range of the microphones.  Over 5000 hours of recordings have been collected between December 2014-April 2015 and November 2015-March 2016.  Acoustic software has been used to start the analysis of this long recording series with the aim to detect and catalogue calls by species and determine when and where the calls were made.  This will provide data on the presence and range of black petrels and other seabirds (and species) across the three sites and provide locations that could be ground-searched for black petrel burrows using random transects and seabird-dogs in the future.v Preliminary results have identified a number of species on the acoustic devices at all three locations and suggest black petrels are present across Great Barrier Island/Aotea in any suitable habitat type and are concentrated on the main high altitude ridgeline on Hauturu/Little Barrier Island and could be prospecting on the Moehau Range.

Buller's Albatross, photograph by Paul Sagar 

Jana Wold, Peter Ritchie, Geoff Chambers & Christopher J. Robertson.  Review of taxonomy and development of genetic assignment testing for Northern Buller's albatross
Buller's albatross are an endemic species to New Zealand and is currently divided into two subspecies, Northern (Thalassarche bulleri platei) and Southern (Thalassarche bulleri bulleri).  These taxa have nonsynchronous breeding seasons, but their identification using morphological methods is challenging. Distinguishing between the two taxa is crucial as Buller’s are a significant bycatch in commercial fisheries and the relative impact on each population is unknown.  Long breeding cycles, low fecundity and late sexual maturity potentially slow the recovery of populations from disturbances that reduce the number of breeding individuals. The overall objective of this study is to use a set of DNA markers to determine the degree of genetic differences between Northern and Southern Buller's albatross. This information could be used to help resolve the taxonomic status of the subspecies. Mitochondrial DNA and microsatellite DNA will be used to determine the levels of genetic variation and differentiation within and between the Northern and Southern Buller's populations. The specific aims of this study are: 1) to develop molecular methods, mtDNA sequencing and microsatellite genotyping for Buller’s Albatross, 2) to use these tools to determine levels of genetic differentiation between the northern and southern groups, and 3) to develop a method for determining the provenance of individuals

The following papers by authors and title on procellariiform birds will also be presented at the conference (click here to read their abstracts).

Johannes H. Fischer, Igor Debski, Graeme Taylor & Heiko U. Wittmer.  Nest-site selection in South Georgian Diving Petrels on Codfish Island (Whenua Hou): implications for conservation management

S.B. Borrelle, Jones, H.P., Barbara Bollard-Breen & D.R. Towns.  Spectral response of Pohutukawa to seabird nutrient inputs  [burrowing seabirds] (click here for more information)

Alan J.D. Tennyson, Matt J. Rayner, Graeme A. Taylor, Stefanie M.H. Ismar, Neil B. Fitzgerald, Megan Friesen & Chris P. Gaskin.  Breeding biology of the New Zealand storm petrel

Colin M. Miskelly & Charles-André Bost.  Seabird research in the French subantarctic (Crozet and Kerguelen Islands)

B.J. Dunphy, Goddard, R.F., Taylor G.A. & Hickey A.J.R.  Conservation physiology of New Zealand seabirds: haematological biomarkers of El Nino impacts?  [Sooty Shearwater Puffinus griseus]

Rachel F. Goddard, Anthony J. Hickey & Brendon J. Dunphy.  Diving physiology and anatomy of sooty shearwaters: What makes them such exceptional athletes?

Megan Friesen, Anne Gaskett, Louis Ranjard, Amy Martin, Jacqueline Beggs & Cheryl Krull.  Evidence of vocal matching in a seabird species: examining acoustic responses in grey-faced petrels

M.J. Rayner, Gaskin, C., Taylor, G., Young, M., Berg, M., Baird, K., Heiss-Dunlop, S., Ismar, S., Freisen, M., Landers, T.J., Sagar, R. & Dunphy, B.J.  Tales from the A frame: a summary of insights from the first 12 years of research of the Burgess Island seabird community [burrowing seabirds]

R.L. Sagar., Dunphy B.J., Stanley M.C. & Rayner M.J.  Winds of change: an inter-annual investigation of factors affecting breeding success in mottled petrel

Graeme Taylor, Kath Walker, Graeme Elliott, Erica Sommer & Matt Rayner.  Ecology of Pterodroma petrels in New Zealand, behavioural insights from geolocation tracking and activity data

R.L. Sagar., Dunphy B.J., Stanley M.C. & Rayner M.J.  Nobody suspects the tea/l: mortality events in burrow nesting seabird chicks as a result of attacks by Campbell Island teal

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 01 June 2016

Tina Cornioley (Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland) and colleagues have a paper in press with the Journal of Animal Ecology which investigates the relationships between body mass and wind patterns in incubating Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans.

The paper’s summary follows:

“1. Wind is an important climatic factor for flying animals as by affecting their locomotion, it can deeply impact their life-history characteristics.

2. In the context of globally changing wind patterns, we investigated the mechanisms underlying recently reported increase in body mass of a population of wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) with increasing wind speed over time.

3. We built a foraging model detailing the effects of wind on movement statistics and ultimately on mass gained by the forager and mass lost by the incubating partner.  We then simulated the body mass of incubating pairs under varying wind scenarios.  We tracked the frequency at which critical mass leading to nest abandonment was reached to assess incubation success.

4. We found that wandering albatrosses behave as time-minimizers during incubation as mass gain was independent of any movement statistics but decreased with increasing mass at departure.  Individuals forage until their energy requirements, which are determined by their body conditions, are fulfilled.  This can come at the cost of their partner’s condition as mass loss of the incubating partner depended on trip duration.  This behaviour is consistent with strategies of long-lived species which favoured their own survival over their current reproductive attempt.  In addition, wind speed increased ground speed which in turn reduced trip duration and males foraged further away than females at high ground speed.

5. Contrasted against an independent dataset, the simulation performed satisfactorily for males but less so for females under current wind conditions.  The simulation predicted an increase in male body mass growth rate with increasing wind speed whereas females’ rate decreased. This trend may provide an explanation for the observed increase in mass of males but not of females.  Conversely, the simulation predicted very few nest abandonments, which is in line with the high breeding success of this species and is contrary to the hypothesis that wind patterns impact incubation success by altering foraging movement.”

Wandering Albatrosses, photograph by Richard Phillips

With thanks to Barry Baker.

Reference:

Cornioley, T.,Börger, L., Ozgul, A. & Weimerskirch, H. 2016.  Impact of changing wind conditions on foraging and incubation success in male and female wandering albatrosses.  Journal of Animal Ecology  DOI:10.1111/1365-2656.12552.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 31 May 2016