Registration is now open for the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) 2016 Open Science Conference.  The conference will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia over 22-26 August 2016.  Its focus is on Antarctica in the Global Earth System: from the Poles to the Tropics and how the changes that we are currently seeing in Antarctica will affect the rest of the world.

Early bird registration is available at a reduced rate until 5 May.

Read about sessions of relevance to the Albatross and Petrel Agreement here.

Abstracts are due by 14 February and early submission is encouraged.  The conference programme, including sessions and descriptions, is available on the conference website.

Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses in Antarctic waters, photograph by John Chardine 

The SCAR Conference is sponsored by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia together with the Sultan Mizan Antarctic Research Foundation and the National Antarctic Research Centre, together with SCAR.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 20 January 2016

An international workshop on Marine Important Bird Areas in Malta and the Mediterranean was held in November last year. The meeting was organized by the LIFE+Malta Seabird Project and BirdLife International and held in Gozo, Malta (click here).

A report on the workshop and a list of presentations made is now available.

A presentation made at the meeting by Thierry Micol and Bernard Deceuninck (LPO, France) discussed progress, including forming an international working group, towards a Species Action Plan (SAP) for the Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan, a seabird endemic to the Mediterranean and Black Seas.  It is intended to hold a workshop in France this year, from which an SAP will be produced by 2017.

Yelkouan Shearwater

The Yelkouan Shearwater has been identified by ACAP’s Advisory Committee as a potential candidate for listing within the Agreement.  The closely-related Balearic Shearwater P. mauretanicus, endemic to the Mediterranean, is an ACAP-listed species.

Reference:

Micol, T. & Deceuninck, B. 2016.  LIFE Euro SAP Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 19 January 2016

Short-tailed Albatrosses Phoebastria albatrus have successfully hatched an egg for the first time on the island of Mukojima in the Ogasawara Islands.  Researchers discovered the chick when they visited the island on 9 January this year.  It appeared to have hatched out five to 10 days earlier (click here).

Mukojima's first Short-tailed Albatross chick gets some attention, photograph by the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology

Two previous breeding attempts on the island, it appears by the same pair, have failed due to the eggs laid being infertile.

There are two main breeding localities for Short-tailed Albatrosses: the volcanic island of Torishima in the Japanese Izu Islands, where there are a total of around 3900 birds, as well as around 200 birds in the disputed Senkaku Islands.  The Japanese Environment Ministry anlong with the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology moved 70 chicks from Torishima to Mukojima for hand rearing until fledging over the five-year period 2007-2011.  Around 10 of these translocated birds on Mukojima have returned after fledging, raising hopes they would commence to breed on the island.  The parents of the 2016 chick are a translocated male from the 2008 translocated cohort and a female that is believed to have fledged from the Senkaku Islands.

"If more than 10 pairs of the birds can successfully hatch an egg, we will be able to regard (Mukojima) as a stable breeding location," commented Kiyoaki Ozaki, who works with the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology.

A single pair (of which the female was translocated to Mukojima in 2009) had bred on nearby Nakodojima Island in the last two years (click here).

View a video clip of the Mukojima hatchling.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 18 January 2016

Keith Springer (MIPEP Manager, Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service, Moonah, Tasmania, Australia) has reviewed the successful Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project in the open-access New Zealand Journal of Ecology.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Vertebrate pest management on Macquarie Island has removed five vertebrate species since 1988; weka (Gallirallus australis scotti), cats (Felis catus), rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), ship (black) rats (Rattus rattus) and house mice (Mus musculus).  The latter three were eradicated in a combined eradication operation that commenced in 2006 and was declared successful in 2014.  Eradication planning for removal of rabbits, rats and mice took about five years, with implementation another three years.  The eradication comprised a two-phase project, with aerial baiting followed up by ground hunting using hunters and trained detection dogs to remove surviving rabbits.  Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease Virus was used as a non-target mitigation strategy prior to a second attempt at aerial baiting after adverse weather forced the abandonment of the first attempt.  The project was considered complex, ambitious and challenging, partly because of the remote location with adverse weather conditions, but especially because multiple-species eradications are considered more difficult to achieve than single-species eradications.  In addition, when eradication planning commenced Macquarie Island (12,785 ha) was many times larger than had previously been attempted for the removal of black rats and house mice (1000 and 800 ha, respectively).  Preliminary empirical and anecdotal evidence is demonstrating the recovery of native flora and fauna in the absence of grazing and predatory mammals.”

A male Wandering Albatross on Macquarie Island, photograph by Kate Lawrence

Reference:

Springer, K. 2016.  Methodology and challenges of a complex multi-species eradication in the sub-Antarctic and immediate effects of invasive species removal.  New Zealand Journal of Ecology 40(2).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 17 January 2016