The Pacific Seabird Group and the Waterbird Society will hold a Joint Meeting from 6-9 January 2025 in San Jose, Costa Rica.  The combined meeting represents the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group and the 48th Annual Meeting of the Waterbird Society.

Detailed information on the meeting, including lists by title of oral and poster presentations is now available online.

Oral papers to be presented include a number on procellariiform seabirds; those on ACAP-listed species as identified by title follow:

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN BREEDING PROCELLARIFORMS AND INDUSTRIAL FISHERIES: LAYSAN ALBATROSS AND BLACK-VENTED SHEARWATER IN THE NORTHERN MEXICAN PACIFIC
Gemma Abaunza, Yuri Vladimir Albores-Barajas, Cecilia Soldatin

SPATIAL SEGREGATION AND BYCATCH RISK: A CASE STUDY OF BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSSES IN THE NORTHWESTERN PACIFIC
Haruka Hayashi, Bungo Nishizawa, NaokiTomita, Daisuke Shiode, Daisuke Ochi

QUANTIFYING IMPACTS OF SEABIRD BYCATCH USING GENETIC ASSIGNMENT: A CASE STUDY OF BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS IN U.S. FISHERIES
Jessie Beck, Diana Baetscher, Claire Tobin, Scott Edwards, Simon Wa Sin, Shannon Fitzgerald, Vanessa Tuttle, John Peschon,j Wesley Larson

Laysan Albatross, artwork by Lenina Villela of Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature for the inaugural World Albatross Day, 19 June 2020

A total of 79 posters will be displayed.  Two have ACAP-listed Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis as their subject; several others cover gadfly petrels, shearwaters and storm petrels.

SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL ATTRACTION OF LAYSAN ALBATROSS TO JAMES CAMPBELL NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE ON OʻAHU, HAWAIʻI
Lauren Pederson, Eric VanderWerf, Robby Kohley, Erika Dittmar, Leilani Fowlke, Kelly Goodale

EVALUATING REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS OF WEDGE-TAILED SHEARWATERS AND LAYSAN ALBATROSS AT KILAUEA POINT NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE POST FENCE CONSTRUCTION
David Hanna, Dylan Blanchard, Lauren Pederson, Yuka Green, Louise Barnfield, Eric VanderWerf, Lindsay Young, Heather Abbey, Bryn Webber

View abstracts for the above and for the  other presentations here.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 31 December 2024

The University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand is now the venue for the Oceania Seabird Symposium in 2025.  Oceania Seabirds will bring the attention of the international and Oceania community to the importance of seabirds within the world’s largest body of water, the Pacific Ocean

The symposium  mission is to:

• Connect government policy makers, seabird conservation practitioners and scientists, land managers and communities from all Pacific Island countries and territories working with seabirds.
• To increase our collective understanding of the value of seabirds to Pacific economies and communities including cultural values.
• Highlight conservation and scientific initiatives currently underway or planned, to the benefit of region’s seabirds, their islands, and the seas where they occur and to the people of Oceania.
• Provide hands-on training and networking for increasing capacity for monitoring and managing Pacific seabird populations at community and national levels.

A Vulnerable Buller's Shearwater Ardenna bulleri off Mercury Islands, New Zealand, a target for a symposium field trip, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Six workshops are planned, to be led by international experts. Two field trips  are to be held on 17 April.  The call for abstracts is now open with a deadline of 28 February 2025.  Most unusually, there is no registration fee!

The symposium was originally planned to be held in New Caledonia in September this year (click here).

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 30 December 2024

An adult Short-tailed Albatross “rain nibbles” on Kure Atoll, 21 December 2024, photograph by Isabelle Beaudoin

Midway Atoll is not the only USA island in the North Pacific Ocean that might in time harbour a colony of Vulnerable Short-Albatrosses Phoebastria albatrus, as recently reported in ACAP Latest News.  Eighty-nine kilometres to the west within the Northwestern Hawaiian Island chain lies Kure Atoll, which has also been getting visits by Makalena (the Hawaiian name for the bird) in the last couple of months.

Isabelle Beaudoin of Peaks to Petrels Photography who is currently a volunteer on the island for the  Kure Atoll Conservancy writes of the above photograph:

This is probably my favourite photograph that I've ever taken.  I currently live in the middle of a colony of 30 000+ pairs of Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses.  Since these guys can turn up whenever, wherever, there is a certain degree of luck (and sharp observation) involved in spotting [a Short-tailed Albatross]. They are visitors to the atoll, and currently do not breed here.  At first, I was disappointed when it started to rain as I watched this magnificent bird.  The flat light wasn't very exciting.  But then I saw it as an opportunity, and quickly set my settings to capture the rain drops in the air, along with the Laysans in the background whilst still keeping the Short-tailed Albatross as the focus, and also trying to capture its great size to compare to the other birds.  Then, just as the sun peeked ever so slightly from behind the clouds, the albatross began engaging in one of my favourite behaviours to watch - what I've dubbed 'rain nibbling'.  This is when they 'nibble' the rain gently straight out of the air to drink it.  Watching this majestic individual, who is likely much older than me, behaving like this in such a setting was really one of the highlights of my season on Kure Atoll so far” [edited].

The adult Short-tailed Albatross on Kure Atoll, 21 December 2024; much larger than the Laysan Albatrosses behind it, photograph by Isabelle Beaudoin

The Kure Atoll Conservancy reports on Instagram that the adult bird is the third Short-tailed Albatross seen this season, having seen one sub-adult last month and another one earlier in December.  “The sub-adults were both observed only in the Black-foot-Laysan heavy areas, both trying to interact/dance with Black-footed Albatrosses.  The adult however was in a Laysan Albatross heavy area, but showed no interest in the other birds”.

Although no Short-tailed Albatrosses currently breed on Hōlanikū {Hawaiian name for Kure Atoll], a female-female pair laid infertile eggs over 2010 to 2018; the placement of decoys in the island earlier this year could help the establishment of breeding once more, hopefully with the laying of fertile eggs (click here).

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 27 December 2024

"Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" is a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Robert Flood (FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, South Africa) & Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu have published in the journal Dutch Birding on the remains of a beach-cast giant petrel Macronectes sp. found and photographed in Turkey in 2013.

“The bird at Cevlik represents the first record of a giant petrel for Türkiye and the Middle East and the fourth for the Western Palearctic.  How the bird arrived at Cevlik shoreline will remain unknown; it may have arrived on the shore alive and then died, it may have died at sea and been washed up on the shore or it may have been transported by a ship into the eastern Mediterranean and thrown or washed overboard and then washed up on the shore.  Bill colouration and bill measurements indicate probable female Northern Giant Petrel [M. halli].”

Reference:

Flood, R. L. & Yoğurtcuoğlu, E. 2024.  Beach-cast giant petrel found at Cevlik, Türkiye, in November 2013.  Dutch Birding 46: 384-387.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 26 December 2024