Female Northern Royal Albatross LYL (Lime-Yellow-Lime) stands over her newly laid egg in November 2025, with male partner behind, photograph by Department of Conservation Ranger Scott

Hatching statistics are in for the intensively managed colony of globally Endangered Northern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea sanfordi at Taiaroa Head/Pukekura on New Zealand’s South Island.

Of the 47 eggs laid in the current 2025/26 breeding season, a record 40 chicks have hatched giving a hatching success of 85.1%.  One chick died when two days old, with the remaining 39 currently transcending to the post-guard stage.

The 2025/26 Royal Cam chick at 46 days of age spreads it’s still stubby wings

Watch the pair WYL and BOK rearing their male chick, which hatched on 22 January, throughout the breeding season via the 24-hour Royal Cam.

Information from the New Zealand Department of Conservation Facebook page.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 17 March 2026

A Black Petrel off North Cape, New Zealand, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Nicholas Daudt (Department of Marine Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, Aotearoa, New Zealand) and colleagues have published open access in the Journal of Marine Systems giving the first quantitative data on seabird assemblages off northeast Aotearoa/New Zealand.  Total seabird biomass was strongly influenced by the seasonal occurrence of four medium-sized migratory procellariiforms, including the ACAP-listed and globally Vulnerable Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Migratory species may influence structural components of species assemblages, such as biomass and diversity patterns. A total of 10 ship-based, strip-transect seabird surveys were undertaken in all seasons (2019–2024) off the northeast coast of Northland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Almost all seabird species recorded were migratory or wide-ranging dispersive (23 of 25). Multivariate model-based ordinations revealed that season primarily explained species assemblages, while including environmental variables such as sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a (useful proxies for studying seabird distribution) offered little extra explanatory power at the assemblage level. There was no clear spatial pattern in the assemblages, suggesting that the study area was used uniformly by the species present at the time. The total seabird biomass present was strongly influenced by the seasonal occurrence of four medium-sized, migratory procellariiforms: tāiko (black petrel; Procellaria parkinsoni), rako (Buller’s shearwater; Ardenna bulleri), ōi (grey-faced petrel; Pterodroma gouldi) and toanui (flesh-footed shearwater; Ardenna carneipes). The biomass estimates showed an eight-fold increase from winter (243 kg/km) to summer (1885 kg/km). Northland will likely be the first region in Aotearoa/New Zealand to experience the consequences of oceanic warming. The study establishes a baseline against which to measure potential future changes in seabird occurrences. Based on descriptive and modelling approaches, the study demonstrated the role of species’ phenologies in shaping assemblages of seabird species and their impact on total estimated biomass, which may affect ecosystem functioning and energy fluxes.”

With thanks to the Pacific Seabird Group.

Reference:

Daud, N.W., Guerra, M., Brough, T., Dwyer, S.L., Zaeschmar, J.R., Schofield, M.R., Smith, R.O., Bugoni, L., Woehler. E.J. & Rayment, W.J. 2026.  Migratory species strongly affect seabird biomass in seasonal assemblages off northeast Aotearoa/New Zealand.  Journal of Marine Systems 255. doi.org/10.1016/j.jmarsys.2026.104201.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 16 March 2026

John Croxall CBE FRS will be the Keynote Speaker at the Fourth World Seabird Conference, to be held in Hobart, Tasmania over 7-11 September 2026.  John is an Emeritus Professor at the Universities of Durham and Birmingham and Founder and Chair until 2020 of the BirdLife International Marine Programme.

“Formerly Head of Higher Predator Studies and Conservation Biology at British Antarctic Survey, where [he] led research into dynamics of Antarctic marine ecosystems, especially the role of seabirds and marine mammals, including pioneering 30-year studies of albatross, penguin and fur seal population and trophodynamics.  [He] used new technology to study foraging behaviour and movements, including multi-species, season and year tracking studies and established global databases to enable collaborative studies and inputs to national, regional and global marine spatial planning.”

John was involved with ACAP in the early days serving as Chair of the First Scientific Meeting associated with the First Meeting of Parties, held in Hobart in November 2004, for which he was an Advisor to the United Kingdom Delegation.

John Croxall on Bird Island in the South Atlantic

He was active within the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), at one stage chairing its then SCAR Bird Biology Subcommittee, as well as within the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) during the 1980s and 1990s.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 13 March 2026

D23 (band readable on expanding) in Chilean waters, photograph by Dan Mosher

Dan Mosher has reported on Facebook of photographing an Endangered Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi off the coast of Chile.  The bird carried a black plastic band on its left leg engraved with D23.

He writes “I recently returned from a cruise [aboard the] Oosterdam from San Antonio, Chile to the Antarctica Peninsula to Buenos Aires and back again.  I’m a deck-watcher and enjoy seeing and photographing the pelagic seabirds we encounter along the way.  On the return trip from Puerto Montt Chile going [north] toward San Antonio, we came across a tagged royal albatross that was quite close to the ship.  The tag clearly reads D23”.  He adds in a comment that the date was 21 February 2026.

Following enquiries posted to his page, the bird was confirmed to be a Northern Royal Albatross from the Taiaroa Head/Pukekura mainland colony near Dunedin in New Zealand, and that it is a male, hatched in 2023, one of 33 chicks to fledge from the colony that [2022/23] season.

Let’s hope it will return to the colony and eventually commence breeding.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 12 March 2026