“Heard Island and nearby McDonald Island are unoccupied by humans and remain one of the world's least anthropogenically disturbed areas”, photograph with a passing Wandering Albatross by Pete Harmsen, CSIRO

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been, seemingly inexorably, spreading around the islands of the Southern Ocean. First recorded in the South Atlantic sub-Antarctic, it was more recently confirmed on the southern Indian Ocean’s Marion Island (South Africa) and France’s Possession, Crozets and Kerguelen Islands.

Now an ongoing expedition to Heard Island, 400 km south of Kerguelen, the first in quite a few years, has recently reported suspected cases of HPAI among the island’s Southern Elephant Seals Mirounga leonina, after observing  unusual levels of mortality  So far it is not suspected among the island’s penguins and other seabirds.  Samples have been taken for return to the Australian mainland in mid-November to confirm the presence of avian flu by the CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.

“Wildlife ecologists taking samples from deceased animals at Atlas Cove, Heard Island”, photograph by Rowena Hannaford

Dr Julie McInnes, a wildlife ecologist at the Australian Antarctic Division, said initial drone and ground surveys of the island did not indicate any unusual levels of mortality.  But when the scientists made their way to the south-east of the island, dead elephants seals, including pups, were discovered.  "We undertook widespread aerial surveys with concurrent ground counts in the region, and samples were also obtained from a number of deceased animals.  The majority of mortalities were detected in elephant seal pups and in a small number of adults.”

Read more from the Australian Antarctic Program here.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza has not yet been reported from Australia’s Macquarie Island or New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands, both to the east of Heard Island.  Just a matter of time?

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 29 October 2025

Wandering Albatross at sea by Lea Finke of Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) for World Albatross Day 2020, after a photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Aline da Silva Cerqueira (Department of Geography, King's College London, UK) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Ecological Informatics on using bird-borne audio recordings to reveal seabird behaviour and environmental context at sea.  The acoustic datasets used in the study were collected from five Black-browed albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris and five Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans during the brood-guard period.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Advancements in acoustic data collection technologies have greatly increased their use in wildlife monitoring, but produce large volumes of data that are challenging to analyse manually.   Recent developments in machine learning, particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have transformed audio data analysis, enabling efficient and accurate sound classification.  This study aimed to develop a method for automatic classification of behaviour (on-water activity, flight, vocalisation and preening) from sounds recorded by free-ranging albatrosses of two species equipped with audio recorders during foraging trips at sea. Using a manually labelled seabird audio dataset, a general-purpose CNN model was created and trained in Google Colab.  The model development followed a structured workflow, including audio data preparation, pre-processing, model architecture and training, and performance evaluation.  The model achieved a global accuracy and precision of 95 % during testing.  Despite high overall accuracy, performance varied across sound categories due to the inherent complexity of distinguishing behaviours, leading to differences in prediction errors.  This study primarily focused on developing and validating an accessible, high-performance workflow for automated acoustic classification, with the goal of enabling future ecological and conservation applications.  It demonstrated that a generic web-based CNN model can effectively classify seabird sounds into different behaviours with high accuracy.  The approach provides a foundation for future ecological and conservation applications, enabling detailed exploration of activities, interactions and environmental context of seabird behaviour using acoustic data.  By leveraging open-source platforms and accessible tools, this work provides a foundation for future advancements in automated acoustic monitoring, making it accessible to a diverse range of researchers.”

With thanks to Richard Phillips.

Reference:

Cerqueira, A.daS., Freeman, R., Phillips. R.A. & Dawson, T.P. 2025.  Automated classification of albatross acoustic behaviour at sea: a free and open-source classifier for seabird sounds.  Ecological Informatics doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2025.103474.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 28 October 2025

 An introduced House Mouse on Marion Island, photograph by Ben Dilley

The Island Invasives 2026 Conference “Charting the Future”, the fourth in the series, will be held at the University of Auckland, New Zealand over 9-13 February 2026.  The draft programme and book of abstracts for over 200 oral and poster presentations are now available for viewing on the conference website.  Information is also available on field trips and social activities.

Three independently organised workshops will be held on the first two days of the conference, for which brief descriptions are available:

Improving success rates for tropical island rat eradications (facilitated by Island Conservation)
This workshop will be focused on identifying and evaluating cost effective measures that can augment existing best practice for rodent eradication on tropical islands to improve success rates.  While a synopsis of past eradication attempts will be provided along with a summary of the most likely reasons for past failures, the focus of discussion will be forward looking.

Getting to the root of the problem in pig eradication practice (facilitated by Island Conservation)
This workshop will be focused on identifying the most resource and labour efficient measures for removing pigs from increasingly large islands.  Two scenarios will be under consideration, the first being islands where pigs are predominantly solitary and the second where pigs move in groups.  The most promising new technologies for pig detection and removal with an eye on scaling up will also be evaluated during the workshop.  The workshop may be a precursor to the development of best practice guidelines for pig eradication.

Challenges in improving mouse eradication success rates (facilitated by the Mouse-Free Marion Project)
This workshop will consider issues around rodent eradication failures, especially for house mice.  The discussion will focus on what factors to address that can help to improve success rates.  A synopsis of past eradication attempts will be provided along with a summary of the most likely reasons for past failures, using these to discuss what variables can modified in eradication planning for future mouse eradications.

The conference plenary speakers will be Imogen Bassett - Island Biosecurity, Keith Broome - Technical Planning, Luciana Luna Mendoza - Tropical Eradications, Jessi Morgan - Community Engagement, Nicola Rata-MacDonald - Indigenous Leadership, David Towns - Island Restoration and David Will - Emerging Technologies.  Click here to read biographical details for each plenary speaker.

The Island Invasives 2026 Organising Committee consists of Professor James Russell, The University of Auckland, Dr Araceli Samaniego, Island Restoration Advisor, Ms Clare Stringer, Department of Conservation, Dr Nick Holmes, The Nature Conservancy, Mr Dick Veitch ONZM, Emeritus Professor Dave Towns ONZM and Emeritus Professor Mick Clout FRSNZ.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 27 October 2025

 All smiles at the presentation ceremony  Tim Appleton and Penny Robinson, founders and organisers of Global Birdfair, with members of the BirdLife Pacific team in Suva, Fiji

This year’s Global Birdfair was held at Lyndon Top, Rutland, UK over 11-13 July.  The Global Birdfairs commenced in 2022, following a long run of annual British Birdwatching Fairs in Rutland that started in 1989 and ended due to COVID19 in 2020.  The 2025 fair adopted as its conservation project “Safeguarding Ocean Species”, looking once again at the incidental mortality (bycatch) of albatrosses and petrels caused by longline fisheries.  This followed on from the 2000 British Birdwatching Fair, which marked the commencement of BirdLife International’s then Seabird Conservation Programme, with its theme of “Keeping Albatrosses off the Hook”.

The 2025 project’s Flagship Species is the globally Endangered and Nationally Critical Antipodean Albatross Diomedea antipodensis – identified by ACAP as a Species of Special Concern.  The Safeguarding Ocean Species project is centred on the South Pacific with Suva, Fiji as its base, from where it works on reducing albatross bycatch in fisheries.

The fair has now announced that it raised US$140 000 towards its chosen project and “wishes the whole [BirdLife] Pacific team continued success in their hard work”.  BirdLife International CEO Martin Harper says: “We are hugely appreciative of the Global Birdfair community for their generous support to birds and BirdLife over so many years. This year’s funds will help us tackle the single greatest threat to our iconic seabirds in the Pacific. Crafted by local women in the Nasinu neighbourhood of Suva, these bird-scaring lines support local livelihoods and ensure safer seas in the southern Pacific.  With this huge funding boost, the programme will expand to more Pacific ports, empowering more women and protecting more albatrosses"

Manufacturing bird-scaring lines in Fiji

Registration for exhibitors, speakers and new applications for Global Birdfair 2026 opens in mid November.

Information from the Facebook pages of the Global Birdfair and BirdLife International.  Read more here.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 24 October 2025, updated 26 October 2025