A Wandering Albatross pair interacts near the weather station on Marion Island, photograph by Stefan Schoombie

BirdLife South Africa's weekly webinar series ‘Conservation Conversations’ last week hosted Tegan Carpenter-Kling and Stefan Schoombie who shared their experiences of living and working on South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean.  Their illustrated talks describe some of the research towards their PhDs they undertook on the island’s seabirds, including on the ACAP-listed albatrosses and giant petrels that are at risk to introduced House Mice.

Conservation Conversations: Tegan Carpenter-Kling and Stefan Schoombie - Seabirds on Marion Island

The Mouse-Free Marion Project aims to eradicate the island’s seabird-killing mice in 2024, thus allowing the albatrosses and giant petrels described in the talks to breed unhindered by a terrestrial predator once more.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 November 2021

The USA’s Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument encompasses the atolls of the North West Hawaiian Islands chain, including Laysan, Midway and Kure.  Between them they support by far the largest part of the global breeding populations of ACAP-listed and globally Near Threatened Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes and Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses, as well as large populations of petrels, shearwaters and other seabirds.  News is now to hand that an enhancement of the monument’s status is being considered by the US Government as described below.

A Black-footed Albatross broods its downy chick on Midway Atoll, photograph by Wieteke Holzhausen

“NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is initiating the process to consider designating marine portions of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument as a national marine sanctuary.  [The] proposed national marine sanctuary designation would only consider marine waters of the monument, and not terrestrial areas.  This designation would add the conservation benefits and permanency of a national marine sanctuary to safeguard resources in the marine portions of the monument.  Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is the largest contiguous fully-protected conservation area under the U.S. flag, encompassing an area of 582,578 square miles [1 508 870 km²] of the Pacific Ocean.”

“There is a long history of considering this area for national marine sanctuary designation, beginning with an Executive Order in 2000 by President William J. Clinton. President George W. Bush designated the monument in 2006 based in part on the sanctuary designation process that was already underway. President Barack H. Obama's proclamation in 2016 that expanded the monument also called for initiating the process to designate a national marine sanctuary. In December 2020, Congress directed NOAA to initiate the sanctuary designation process.”

A Laysan Albatross feeds its chick on Midway Atoll, photograph by Pete Leary

“NOAA is inviting the public to comment on the range of issues to be considered for the designation of a national marine sanctuary, including potential boundaries; impacts on historic properties; resources that would be protected by a sanctuary; and the potential socioeconomic, cultural, and biological impacts of sanctuary designation.  The information the agency receives during the comment period will be used to develop draft designation documents including a draft sanctuary management plan, proposed sanctuary regulations, and terms of designation.”

NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is a trustee of a system of 15 national marine sanctuaries and Papahānaumokuākea and Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments.  The public can comment on the proposal until 31 January 2022.  Read more on the proposed designation here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 November 2022

 
Black-browed Albatross at sea, artwork for ACAP by Lois Davis, Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN)

Anne-Sophie Bonnet-Lebrun (British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, U.K.) and colleagues have published in the journal Animal Behaviour on testing the “win-stay–lose-shift” strategy with Black-browed Abatrosses Thalassarche melanophris foraging at sea.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Foraging site selection and site fidelity can have implications for many ecological processes. The degree of site fidelity differs greatly not just between species but also within populations. Some of this variation may be explained by a win-stay–lose-shift (WSLS) strategy, where an individual returns to its most recent foraging area only if the previous visit was profitable. However, the use and adaptive value of this strategy have mostly been tested in captivity, largely because of the difficulty in obtaining accurate measures of profitability (foraging efficiency) in the wild. Here, we used a rare combination of data on movements of breeding black-browed albatrosses, Thalassarche melanophris, tracked using satellite transmitters, and on chick meal mass obtained from automatic nest balances, to test whether individuals adopted a WSLS strategy, and how this strategy performed in terms of provisioning rate. We found results consistent with the use of a WSLS strategy, and that the strategy had some adaptive value, albeit rather limited. Our observational study of free-living seabirds corroborates previous experimental results suggesting that animals account for recent foraging success in their decision making and can adapt their strategy to local resource dynamics.”

Reference:

Bonnet-Lebrun, A.-S.,  Collet, J.& Phillips, R.A. 2021.  A test of the win-stay–lose-shift foraging strategy and its adaptive value in albatrosses.  Animal Behaviour 182:145-151.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 24 November 2021

H18 off the Cape Peninsula, photograph by Trevor Hardaker

A colour-banded Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus was photographed approximately 32 nautical miles (59 km) offshore on a Zest for Birds ‘pelagic’ bird-watching day trip out of Hout Bay on South Africa’s Cape Peninsula on 14 November 2021.  The bird was seen among a flock of seabirds attending a demersal hake trawler.  It was originally banded (with metal SAFRING 9-A69410 on its right leg and plastic Yellow H18 on its left) as a breeding female (determined by culmen length) of unknown age on 07 October 2016 in a monitoring colony below Low Hump on Gough Island in the South Atlantic, the most northerly breeding locality for the species.

Track followed on 14 November 2021

The bird was recorded breeding again in the Low Hump colony in the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons (successfully) and again in the 2020/21 season (unsuccessfully), being last seen there in May 2021.  Her partner since at least 2018/19, Yellow G93, had been recorded on an empty nest in the colony on 16 September this year but it seems no breeding took place.  So it appears H18 is on “sabbatical” for the current 2021/22 season as female Southern Giant Petrels are unlikely to travel that far away from home when breeding – although they have been seen around Tristan da Cunha 413 km away from Gough just a few days after being recorded incubating on the island (click here).  Taking years off from breeding is quite common for the species; indeed, the bird may also have missed the 2017/18 breeding season.

The observation is of particular interest to ACAP’s Information Officer as he initiated the long-term monitoring study in the Low Hump colony in September 2010 with the support of a Captain Simpson Scholarship from the Royal Naval Birdwatching Society.   Good to know then that after a decade the study he set up colour- and metal-banding incubating birds and staking nests towards the end of his field-work years, with high hopes of it continuing, is being kept going by field researchers from the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

With thanks to Trevor Hardaker, Zest for Birds and Steffen Oppel, RSPB.

Reference:

Cooper, J. & Parker, G.C. 2011.  Observations of sexual dimorphism among the Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus of Gough Island.  Sea Swallow 60: 84-90.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 23 November 2021