Members of Marion Island’s 82nd Overwintering Team with their World Albatross Day 2025 banner, replete with individual messages and the welcome news they have sponsored a hectare to the Saving Marion Island’s Seabirds: The Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project

The inaugural year for World Albatross Day was 2020.  In order to increase awareness of the day a request was made to seabird researchers and managers to make and display banners marking on (or close to) 19 June on islands where ACAP-listed species breed.  The uptake was excellent with many islands being featured in the North Pacific and Southern Ocean (see the whole collection here).  In 2021 a call was made for World Albatross Day banners to be taken to sea on fishing vessels.  In the following years banners continued to be displayed on islands and elsewhere, including this year, the sixth that World Albatross Day has been celebrated, as the photo portfolio depicted here shows.

50 past and present members of the South African National Antarctic Programme and Antarctic Legacy of South Africa celebrate World Albatross Day at a Midwinter party in Franschhoek, South Africa on 21 June 2025, photograph by Ria Olivier, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa

South Africa’s 2024/25 Overwintering Team (G70) on Gough Island with their World Albatross Day banner.  Long-term ACAP supporter (and instigator of World Albatross Day) Michelle Risi (front, left) holds a wooden model of an Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross made by Kabelo Moabi (G64)

Staffers and guests at this year’s World Albatross Day morning tea at the Australian Antarctic Division on 19 June.  Dr Christine Bogle, ACAP’s outgoing Executive Secretary, holds the World Albatross Day banner on the left, incoming ACAP Executive Secretary, Jonathon Barrington, holds the other end on the right.  ACAP Advisory Committee Chair, Dr Mike Double, is at the back, sixth from the left (read more about the event here).  Photograph by Wendy Pyper

It was windy on Marion Island on World Albatross Day this year as a video clip shows! The White suits and masks are part of the island field researchers'  HPAI avian flu protective kit for sampling

ACAP Latest News will be pleased to receive photographs of any more WAD2025 banners out there.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 26 June 2025

As part of its activities to mark World Albatross Day (WAD2025) and its theme of “Effects of Disease” on 19 June this year, ACAP collaborated, for the sixth year running, with the international collective Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) to produce 40 artworks depicting the Endangered Amsterdam Albatross Diomedea amsterdamensis and the Endangered Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross Thalassarche carteri.  From this collection, seven paintings were chosen to illustrate art posters, available for downloading and non-commercial use.

As in previous years, to wrap up ABUN Project #49 “Effects of Disease” all the paintings have been combined into a single poster by ABUN’s Marion Schön, who led the collaboration this year, having taken over as Administrator from ABUN Co-founder and long-time ACAP supporter, Kitty Harvill.

All the #49 paintings can be viewed in an album on ACAP’s Facebook page.  The eight WAD2025 posters are also available from the ACAP album store, as are paintings from earlier collaborations with ABUN since the inaugural World Albatross Day in 2020.

With thanks to Marion Schön.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 26 June 2025

 
Northern Giant Petrel Macronectes halli by Peter Shearer, Artist & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) for the Saving Marion Island’s Seabirds: The Mouse-Free Marion Project, after his own photograph

“We seek an enthusiastic and quantitative researcher to develop a mechanistic model integrating foraging energetics and movement data to assess how wind and sea ice influence giant petrel diet, habitat use, population trends and predation pressure on avian species.”

The Postdoctoral Associate will conduct research in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences under the supervision of Principal Investigator, Lesley Thorne.  The selected candidate will work with ecologists at Stony Brook University, New York, USA and with Richard Phillips at the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK.

Read more here. The application deadline is 17 July.

With thanks to Richard Phillips.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 24 June 2025

“Nestled in a Cliffside Colony” by pointillist artist Holly Parsons

As part of its activities to mark World Albatross Day (WAD2025) and its theme of “Effects of Disease” on 19 June this year, ACAP once more collaborated with the international collective Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) to produce 40 artworks depicting the two albatross species chosen to be featured.  They are the Endangered Amsterdam Albatross Diomedea amsterdamensis, endemic to France’s Amsterdam Island, and the southern Indian Ocean’s Endangered Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross Thalassarche carteri.  From the collection, eight paintings were chosen to illustrate art posters.  Seven posters were released during ‘WADWEEK’ over 17-19 June.  The eighth and last in the series is released here today.

Holly Parsons’ painting “Nestled in a Cliffside Colony” is of an Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross brooding its downy chick.  It follows a photograph taken by the French marine ornithologist Karine Delord at the falaises d’Entrecasteaux breeding colony on Amsterdam Island.  Holly has used the pointillism technique where small, distinct dots of colour are applied in patterns to form an image, first used by the French neo-impressionist artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in 1886.

Holly Parsons photographing seabirds to help inspire her art on the Flock to Marion voyage in January 2025

Holly, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA, writes to ACAP Latest News about herself and her artwork: “I learned to paint using the pointillism style because of jittery hands following a brain injury.  And now I still love all the dots!  I also used some brush strokes for the lush grasses and nest.  Amsterdam Island was on fire when I started this painting.  I was inspired to immortalize the landscape, and I hoped that the albatrosses would be spared. And they were!  This cliffside colony did not burn and all the chicks were saved.”  She adds that she used acrylics on canvas board, and that her painting measures 16 x 20 inches (40.5 x 51 cm).

Short-tailed Albatrosses George and Geraldine by Holly Parsons for ACAP’s World Albatross Day on 19 June 2024, after a photograph by Jonathon Plissner.  Geraldine is the darker bird in front on the nest.  Acrylics on canvas board

Holly Parsons, who manages the Facebook group Albatross Lovers, has previously painted for ACAP.  Last year she produced two artworks for WAD2024, one of which, of George and Geraldine, the well-known pair of Vulnerable Short-tailed Albatrosses Phoebastria albatrus, that breeds on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific, also uses the pointillism technique.

All eight WAD2025 art posters are available for downloading and for personal and educational display from here.  They should not be used for commercial gain.

With thanks to Karine Delord for the use of her photograph and Holly Parsons for her painting.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 23 June 2025