The Ninth Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee (AC9) will be held in La Serena, Chile next month from the 9th to the 13th.  It will be preceded by the Seventh Meeting of the AC’s Seabird Bycatch Working Group from 2 to 4 May and the Third Meeting of the AC’s Population and Conservation Status Working Group on 5 and 6 May.  The three meetings will be held at the beach-side Hotel Club La Serena.  La Serena is a coastal town 470 km north of Santiago, the capital of Chile.

Ten of the Agreement’s 13 Parties are expected to be present.  In addition, three non-Party Range States (Canada, Namibia and the USA) will be attending as observers.  Three international non-governmental organizations will also attend the meetings as observers.  They are:

BirdLife International
Humane Society International
Oikonos

NGOs and other organizations from five countries are also listed to attend:

American Bird Conservancy, USA
Colorado State University, USA
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, UK
Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas, Mexico
One Health Institute, University of California, Davis, USA
Instituto de Fomento Pesquero, Chile
Island Conservation, Chile
Projeto Albatroz, Brazil

Click here for a list of expected meeting participants to AC9 by name and affiliation.

Sooty Albatross near Amsterdam Island, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

AC9 will be chaired by Mark Tasker, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, United Kingdom.  The ACAP Secretariat will be represented by Marco Favero, Executive Secretary, Wiesława Misiak, Science Officer and John Cooper, Information Officer, along with Juan Pablo Seco Pon of Argentina and an interpretation team.

Documents and Information Papers for the three meetings are now available on this website.  Note that some are password protected, with only summaries publically available.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 13 April 2016

BirdLife South Africa is once more looking for bird observers to collect “Atlas of Seabird at Sea” (AS@S) data for a number of trips planned for this and early next year out of Cape Town.

Black-browed Albatrosses gater behind a trawler in the Southern Ocean, photograph by Graham Parker

Single observers are required for the following nine coastal cruises on the Algoa up to March 2017:

IEP West Coast cruise: 11-30 May 2016
South Coast Moorings cruise: 16-30 Jun 2016
IEP West Coast cruise: 3-22 Aug 2016
SAMBA Moorings cruise: 5-19 Sep 2016
West Coast Whale Survey: 28 Oct- 6 Nov 2016
IEP West Coast cruise: 9 Nov - 3 Dec 2016
South Coast Moorings cruise: 6 - 15 Dec 2016
IEP West Coast cruise: 10 Feb - 5 Mar 2017
Benthic - Cape Canyon 9 - 28 Mar 2017

Expressions of interest are requested for two observers for each of the following two Antarctic cruises on the S.A. Agulhas II (berths still to be confirmed):

Southern Ocean Winter Voyage: 5 - 28 Jul 2016
Annual SANAE Relief Voyage: Dec 2016 - Feb 2017

Data are collected according to revised simplified methods available to view at the project website.

Sufficient prior experience or participation in the above coastal cruises would be beneficial in securing a position on the Antractic cruises.

Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more details experience requited and how to apply.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 12 April 2016

Edward Abraham and colleagues (Dragonfly Data Science, Wellington, New Zealand) have produced a report for the New Zealand Department of Conservation on the demographic parameters of 12 albatross taxa that breed within New Zealand.

The report’s executive summary follows:

“The New Zealand Department of Conservation is developing a seabird threat framework, “to better understand, and manage, at-sea threats to our seabirds”.  This framework will allow the impact of threats on seabird populations to be qualitatively assessed, and will be used to prioritise a programme of seabird population monitoring.  As a first stage in developing the framework, a database of demographic parameters and threats was prepared.  In this project, a process was established for reviewing and synthesising this information.  The demographic parameters were then used to develop an online tool, which allowed for the impact of changes in parameters on population growth rates to be assessed.  In the future, this tool will allow the impact of current and potential threats on seabird populations to be promptly explored.  The process was trialled on the 12 albatross taxa recognised by the New Zealand Threat Classification System: Gibson’s wandering albatross (Diomedea antipodensis gibsoni); antipodean wandering albatross (Diomedea antipodensis antipodensis); southern royal albatross (Diomedea epomophora); northern royal albatross (Diomedea sanfordi); Campbell Island mollymawk (Thalassarche impavida); New Zealand white-capped mollymawk (Thalassarche cauta steadi); Salvin’s mollymawk (Thalassarche salvini); Chatham Island mollymawk (Thalassarche eremita); grey-headed mollymawk (Thalassarche chrysostoma); southern Buller’s mollymawk (Thalassarche bulleri platei); northern Buller’s mollymawk (Thalassarche bulleri bulleri); and light-mantled sooty albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata).  An online survey was conducted, with 16 seabird researchers invited to review the albatross demographic data. Of these researchers, seven participated in the survey.  A statistical model was then used to estimate the demographic parameters, and the population growth rate was estimated through a matrix population model.  A web application was built that provides these demographic estimates as a base case, allowing the user to explore how changes to the parameters affect the population growth rate.  For most albatross species, there was a wide uncertainty, both in the demographic parameters and in the population growth rate.  The growth rate of Gibson’s wandering albatross was negative (a mean annual population growth of -4.7%, 95% c.i.: -9.5 to -1.0), aligning with results from more detailed modelling.  The uncertainty of the growth rates of all other taxa included zero, and so this analysis could not differentiate whether or not their populations were stable.  The parameters will continue to be updated as more information becomes available.”

Buller's Albatrosses at The Snares, photograph by Jean-Claude Stahl

Reference:

Abraham, E., Yvan, R. & Clements, K. 2016.  Evaluating Threats to New Zealand Seabirds, Report for the Department of Conservation.  Wellington: Dragonfly Data Science.  19 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 11 April 2016

Sarah Gutowsky (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) has submitted her thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy that looks at analysing at-sea movements of Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes and Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses.

The thesis abstract follows:

“Wide-ranging pelagic seabirds are among the most threatened and most mobile of all marine taxa.   Understanding their movement ecology is necessary to develop effective conservation solutions for declines, yet many drivers of their movements throughout the life cycle are poorly understood. Particularly, movements during two critical life stages are known in little detail for many species: the period of post-natal dispersal for fledglings and the non-breeding period for adults.  Biologging technologies provide means to study individual at-sea movements during all life stages.  However, advances in analytical approaches for examining biologger data have in some cases lagged behind that of the technologies themselves.  The objectives of my thesis are to address weaknesses in our understanding of seabird movement ecology and in the approaches used to describe seabird movement from biologger data, using two threatened seabirds, the Laysan Phoebastria immutabilis and black-footed P. nigripes albatrosses, as models.  In Chapter Two, I describe for the first time the movement and habitat of black-footed albatross fledglings, and compare with those of non-breeding adults.  In Chapter Three, I develop an approach to assess detailed activity budgets for non-breeding seabirds, and apply this method to explore drivers of non-breeding movements for both model species.  In Chapter Four, I evaluate the limitations of a common approach where period-specific space use for a group, such as a colony, is inferred from a sample of biologger-equipped individuals.  In Chapter Five, I build a conceptual framework of the drivers of movement with a focus on the albatross family (Diomedeidae), and apply this to identify trends and weaknesses in the literature on albatross movement.  My work demonstrates the value of taking a holistic view of seabird movement ecology; interpreting observed movement patterns requires considering multiple interacting factors that drive individuals to move, including intrinsic factors, such as age, breeding phase, and moult status, as well as how “decisions” are made of when and where to move, and what modes of movement are used.  Biologging tools afford insights into these drivers of movement, especially when the individual nature of biologger data is considered in analyses, with implications for ecological understanding and conservation.”

Black-footed Albatrosses dance with Laysan Albatrosses behind, photograph by Pete Leary

Reference:

Gutowsky, S.E. 2016.  Pelagic seabird movement ecology: assessing drivers of albatross (Diomedeidae) movement and the utility of biologging tools for wide-ranging and threatened seabirds.  PhD thesis.  Halifax: Dalhousie University.  171 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 April 2016