An Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross broods its chick under a Phylica tree on Gough Island

NOTE:  This is the fourth in an occasional series that aims to feature photographs of the 31 ACAP-listed species, along with information from and about their photographers.  Here, Christopher Jones writes about the ACAP-listed and globally Endangered Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross, a species he has studied on Gough Island in the South Atlantic.

Chris Jones descends a coastal cliff on Gough

I grew up in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, spending a good chunk of my formative years visiting national parks where I developed an appreciation of the natural world.  This drove me to study Zoology and Ecology at the Universities of Pretoria and KwaZulu-Natal.  I did not really know much about pelagic seabirds until one of my lecturers, Prof. Marthan Bester, gave a presentation about Marion and Gough Islands, where South Africa operates weather stations.  After learning about these far-flung places, I was determined to visit them as a researcher.

Losing its down: an Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross chick

Once I completed my undergraduate studies, I was very fortunate to take up a position as a field biologist on Gough Island from 2014 to 2015.  I must admit that before heading down to Gough for the first time, I was most excited about penguins and seals.  But during my first walkabout on the island, the very first animal I encountered was an Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross.  My first albatross up close on land!  Seeing their exceptional beauty, I soon became far more interested in albatrosses and petrels.  This first year on Gough was a life-changing experience for me.  During this time, part of my job was to closely monitor the breeding cycle of several seabird species, including Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatrosses, from egg laying to chicks fledging.  It was an incredible experience being able to follow their cycles over a whole year.  Amidst this fieldwork, I also collected data for my M.Sc. dissertation, supervised by Prof. Peter Ryan (FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town), on the comparative ecology of Broad-billed Pachyptila vittata (Least Concern) and globally Endangered MacGillivray’s P. macgillivrayi Prions breeding sympatrically on Gough Island.

 
A rare occurrence: attempting to raise two chicks

While writing up my M.Sc. I also worked on several remote islands in the Seychelles from 2015 to 2017 and as a seabird researcher on Marion Island from 2017 to 2018.  Then in 2018 I returned to Gough Island as Senior Field Biologist for the Gough Island Restoration Programme (GIRP); a mouse-eradication project run by the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).  This time I spent two years on Gough until 2020, focusing on collecting pre-eradication baseline demographic data for seabirds, land birds and terrestrial invertebrates.  The eradication project was planned to be completed in 2020 but was unfortunately postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic.  So, I re-joined the project in 2021, involved with establishing captive founder populations for the endemic Gough Finch or Bunting Rowettia goughensis (Critically Endangered) and Gough Moorhen Gallinula comeri (Vulnerable), which were at risk to non-target poisoning, as well as being involved in the baiting phase of the operation.  I hope to re-visit Gough in a few years’ time as see the ecosystem flourishing in the absence of invasive House Mice.  Until then I plan to continue island hopping around the world and contributing to the conservation of these special ecosystems

Close to departure: an Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross fledgling spreads its wings close to the cliff edge

Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatrosses are truly beautiful birds
Photographs by Chris Jones

Selected Scientific Publications:

Jones, C.W. P. 2018.  Comparative ecology of Pachyptila species breeding sympatrically at Gough Island.  M,Sc. thesis.  University of Cape Town.  81 pp.

Jones, C.W., Phillips, R.A., Grecian, W.J. & Ryan, P.G. 2020.  Ecological segregation of two superabundant, morphologically similar, sister seabird taxa breeding in sympatry.  Marine Biology 167:167: 1-16.

Jones, C.W., Risi, M.M. & Bester, M.N. 2020.  Local extinction imminent for southern elephant seals Mirounga leonina at their northernmost breeding site, Gough Island – South Atlantic Ocean.  Polar Biology  43: 893-897.

Jones, C.W., Risi, M.M., Cleeland, J. & Ryan, P.G. 2019.  First evidence of mouse attacks on adult albatrosses and petrels breeding on sub-Antarctic Marion and Gough Islands.  Polar Biology 42: 619 -623.

Jones, C.W., Risi, M.M., Osborne, A.M. et al. 2020.  Abundance, distribution and breeding success of the endemic Gough Island Finch Rowettia goughensis between 2009 and 2018.  Emu - Austral Ornithology  120: 230-238.

Jones, C.W., Risi, M.M., Osborne, A.M., Ryan, P.G. & Oppel, S. 2021.  Mouse eradication is required to prevent local extinction of an endangered seabird on an oceanic island.  Animal Conservation 24: 637-645.

Risi, M.M., Jones, C.W., Osborne, A.M., Steinfurth, A. & Oppel, S. 2021.  Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus depredating breeding Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatrosses Thalassarche chlororhynchos on Gough Island. Polar Biology  44: 593-599.

Christopher Jones, 07 September 2021

Scopoli's Shearwater Calonectris diomedea at sea, photograph by John Borg

Luke Halpin (School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Australia) and colleagues have published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution on testing the accuracy of light-level geolocators on three species of Calonectris shearwaters.

The paper’s abstract follows:

1. Light-level geolocators are popular bio-logging tools, with advantageous sizes, longevity and affordability. Biologists tracking seabirds often presume geolocator spatial accuracies between 186 and 202 km from previously innovative, yet taxonomically, spatially and computationally limited, studies. Using recently developed methods, we investigated whether assumed uncertainty norms held across a larger-scale, multispecies study.
2. We field-tested geolocator spatial accuracy by synchronously deploying these with GPS loggers on scores of seabirds across five species and 11 Mediterranean Sea, east Atlantic and south Pacific breeding colonies. We first interpolated geolocations using the geolocation package FLightR without prior knowledge of GPS tracked routes. We likewise applied another package, probGLS, additionally testing whether sea-surface temperatures could improve route accuracy.
3. Geolocator spatial accuracy was lower than the ~200 km often assumed. probGLS produced the best accuracy (mean ± SD= 304 ± 413 km, n= 185 deployments) with 84.5% of GPS-derived latitudes and 88.8% of longitudes falling within resulting uncertainty estimates. FLightR produced lower spatial accuracy (408 ± 473 km, n = 171 deployments) with 38.6% of GPS-derived latitudes and 23.7% of longitudes within package-specific uncertainty estimates. Expected inter-twilight period (from GPS position and date) was the strongest predictor of accuracy, with increasingly equatorial solar profiles (i.e. closer temporally to equinoxes and/or spatially to the Equator) inducing more error. Individuals, species and geolocator model also significantly affected accuracy, while the impact of distance travelled between successive twilights depended on the geolocation package.
4. Geolocation accuracy is not uniform among seabird species and can be considerably lower than assumed. Individual idiosyncrasies and spatiotemporal dynamics (i.e. shallower inter-twilight shifts by date and latitude) mean that practitioners should exercise greater caution in interpreting geolocator data and avoid universal uncertainty estimates. We provide a function capable of estimating relative accuracy of positions based on geolocator-observed inter-twilight period.”

Reference:

With thanks to Ken Morgan.

Halpin, L.R., Ross, J.D., Ramos, R., Mott, R., Carlile, N., Golding, N., Reyes-González, J.M., Militão, T., De Felipe, F., Zajková, Z., Cruz-Flores, N., Saldanha, S., Morera-Pujol, V., Navarro-Herrero, L., Zango, L., González-Solís, J. & Clarke, R.H. 2021.  Double-tagging scores of seabirds reveals that light-level geolocator accuracy is limited by species idiosyncrasies and equatorial solar profiles.   Methods in Ecology and Evolution doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13698.

John Coo per, ACAP Information Officer, 06 September 2021

"Sing a Song" - paper collage for ACAP by Ellyn Bousman Lentz, after a photograph of Wandering Albatrosses by Michelle Risi

Lonneke Goddijn-Murphy (Environmental Research Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands, Thurso, United Kingdom) and colleagues have published in the journal Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment on the value of utilizing `Earth Observation data via satellites for studies of seabird and their habitats, at breeding colonies and at sea.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Remote sensing, the science of obtaining information about objects or areas from a distance, has the potential to contribute greatly to conservation, ecology and biodiversity studies. Here, we introduce remote sensing capabilities that could contribute to seabird studies, covering remoting sensing of seabirds directly, and indirectly through remote sensing of seabird habitats. We focus on satellite remote sensing, as these data are the most readily available, and are mostly freely available, and we also present some additional Earth observation (EO) data. This is not an exhaustive list, rather a selection of practical and user-friendly data and tools that are publicly available. At present, the spatial resolution of optical commercial satellite imagery is high enough to identify the largest seabirds such as penguins and albatrosses. Military satellites are capable of higher resolutions that can detect 10 cm objects, but these are not available to the general public. Satellite observation and other EO datasets containing geographic and sea surface condition variables are useful for complementing seabird sightings and tracking data, with their associations justifiable for certain species, breeding status and locations. This paper is aimed at researchers in the fields of seabird conservation, ecology, and biodiversity whose research would benefit from satellite data and from knowing what data sources are available.”

See also a report on a publication in ACAP Latest News on counting albatrosses from space.

With thanks to Alex Bond.

Reference:

Goddijn-Murphy, L., O’Hanlon, N.J., James, N.J.,  Masden, E.A. & Bond, A.L. 2021.  Earth observation data for seabirds and their habitats: An introduction.  Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 24. doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2021.100619.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 September 2021

Buller's Shearwater off Mercury Islands, New Zealand; photograph by Kirk Zufelt

 Megan Friesen (Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust, Auckland, New Zealand) and colleagues have published in the journal Emu – Austral Ornithology on a breeding census of the globally Vulnerable and nationally Naturally Uncommon Buller’s Shearwaters Ardenna bulleri.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Accurate and repeatable population estimates are key to establishing population trends and conservation status. Rako, or Buller’s Shearwater (Ardenna bulleri) is a seabird endemic to New Zealand that breeds only on the Poor Knights Islands, but forages throughout wider areas of the Pacific Ocean during the non-breeding season. The lack of threats on the breeding grounds and the wide foraging range of Buller’s Shearwaters makes them ideal sentinels of ocean health. Although they are commonly seen at sea and the population in the 1980s was thought to be around 2.5 million birds, other rapid land-based surveys suggested a much lower figure (~100,000 pairs on Aorangi), and no thorough population estimate has been undertaken to date. We calculated a population estimate for Buller’s Shearwater based on burrow counts and state of occupancy conducted at the Poor Knights during either the 2016–2017 or the 2017–2018 breeding seasons. We incorporated information on habitat availability and preference in population models. Our estimate of 78,645 (95% confidence interval 67,176–89,178) active burrows, broadly representing breeding pairs, is lower than some previously published assessments. This is a repeatable quantitative study of the Buller’s Shearwater breeding population, including breeding activity, and provides critical baseline data to determine population trends for this potentially important marine indicator species.”

Reference:

Friesen, M.R., Simpkins, C.E., Ross, J., Anderson, S.H., Ismzar-Rebitz, S.M.H., Tennyson, A.J.D., Taylor,G.A., Baird, K.A. & Gaskin, C.P. 2021.  New population estimate for an abundant marine indicator species, Rako or Buller’s Shearwater (Ardenna bulleri).  Emu – Austral Ornithologydoi.org/10.1080/01584197.2021.1924066.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 September 2021