The Ninth Meeting of the ACAP Advisory Committee (AC9) and the preceding Working Group meetings will be held at the beach-side Hotel Club La Serena, Avenida del Mar 1000, La Serena, Region de Coquimbo, Chile over 2-13 May 2016.  La Serena is a coastal town 470 km north of Santiago, the capital of Chile.

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Hotel Club La Serena

The Seventh Meeting of the Seabird Bycatch Working Group (SBWG7) will be held from Monday, 2 May to Wednesday, 4 May 2016.  The Third Meeting of the Population and Conservation Status Working Group (PaCSWG3) will be held from Thursday, 5 May to Friday, 6 May 2016.  AC9 will be held from Monday 9 to Friday 13 May 2016.

Pink-footed Shearwater, breeding endemic to Chile, and ACAP's most recently-listed species, Photograph by Peter Hodum

See Circular No. 2 for more details on the Chile meetings.  Further information on the transfer services, social events and other logistical arrangements will be provided in AC9 Meeting Circular No. 3.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 8 December 2015

The corpse of a Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi collected on the coast near Wellington, New Zealand last month had swallowed an entire Seal Shark Dalatias licha, with parts of the shark protruding from the bird’s body.

A shortened account of the incident by Alan Tennyson of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa follows:

“In the lab we were astounded to see a shark’s tail protruding from its neck.  When we cut the dead bird open we found that the shark was intact and reached the entire length of the bird’s body cavity!  The shark was completely undigested – no doubt it had been protected by its tough, sandpaper-like skin – and we speculate that the bird choked on the fish."

The shark’s tail protrudes through a hole in the albatross’ neck

Northern Royal Albatross and Seal Shark after separation

Photographs by Alan Tennyson

"This was no ordinary looking shark – it was a seal shark, a worldwide species with a particularly vicious set of teeth distributed in a circular arrangement in its jaws.  It uses these teeth for bandsawing chunks out of creatures as big as whales.  We looked inside the shark’s gut also but there was no evidence that it had been eating the albatross from the inside.

As seal sharks are a deep water species, we suspect that the hungry bird gulped down the shark which it found as waste from a trawler, and thus both bird and shark met an untimely end.”

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 December 2015

Two Westland Petrel Procellaria westlandica fledglings have been run over recently on roads near their single breeding site, most likely after striking nearby power wires.

ACAP-listed and Vulnerable Westland Petrels breed at only one locality in the South Island of New Zealand (click here).  They are also at risk to becoming disorientated by bright lights at night, causing them to crash land on roads where they then can become “road kill”.  Fortunately, a fledgling recently downed by lights was caught alive and successfully released to sea from a cliff top, as illustrated below.

A call has been made to switch off or shade outside lights in the vicinity of the breeding site during the fledging season and to pick up and box downed birds for later release.

Photographs and information from the Petrel Colony Tours Facebook Page.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 December 2015

Efforts to help reduce the number of Vulnerable and ACAP-listed Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni being accidentally killed during commercial fishing have earned Leigh Fisheries NZ Operations Manager Tom Searle one of four Seabird Smart Awards for 2015 from the Southern Seabird Solutions Trust.

Black Petrel at sea, photograph by Biz Bell

Tom Searle has ensured that around 35 long-line skippers, almost all the company does business with, have attended a Seabird Smart training workshop on how to reduce bycatch, along with helping prepare seabird risk management plans for each vessel.  He has also helped coordinate trips for fishers to the breeding colony of Black Petrels on Great Barrier Island.

"Rules and regulations are all well and good but it is the fishers themselves who are out there interacting with the birds who have to take personal responsibility to reduce seabird captures."  Two seabird liaison officers now talk to long-line vessel owners, skippers and crews and give advice on techniques and equipment that can be used to reduce seabird bycatch.

Click here to read more.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 December 2015