An Amsterdam Albatross broods its chick on Amsterdam Island, photograph by Jérémy Dechartre

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement has adopted its theme of "Effects of Disease" for this year's World Albatross Day on 19 June.  As part of the build up to WAD2025, ACAP will hold its very first photography competition.  The two albatrosses to be featured in the competition are the Endangered Amsterdam Albatross Diomedea amsterdamensis, endemic to France’s Amsterdam Island, and the Endangered Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross Thalassarche carteri, that breeds on several islands in the southern Indian Ocean.  Both species are at risk to avian cholera caused by Pasteurella multocida on Amsterdam Island.

Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross at sea near Amsterdam Island, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Photographers are encouraged to submit up to two photographs for each species for the competition to the ACAP Emeritus Information Officer at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. up until 30 April.  Photos should be sent as JPGs of at least 2.5 mb and be accompanied by the photographer’s name, species, locality and date.  A title or a brief description can also be submitted if so wished.

During May the submitted photos will be reviewed by three independent judges, who will make their first, second and third choices for each species in two separate categories of pictures taken on land and at sea.  Their scorings will then be totalled via a points system to identify the four winners in each of the two categories for the two species.  These will then be made into four downloadable posters available for personal use that will be released during “WADWEEK”, that comes immediately before World Albatross Day on 19 June.

The three persons chosen to judge the competition are Isabelle Beaudoin of Peaks to Petrels Photography, a seabird and habitat restoration ecologist currently working on Kure Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Holly Parsons, Administrator of the Albatross Lovers Facebook page, and Michelle Risi, Field Biologist with the Royal Society for the Protection of Bird’s Gough Island Restoration Programme - and currently based on Gough.

All photographs are submitted with the understanding ACAP may use them on its website and in its social media postings in the cause of albatross conservation.

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

A feral cat feeds on the body of a White-capped Albatross chick close to fledging on Auckland Island, photograph by Stephen Bradley

The international conservation initiative, Island-Ocean Connection Challenge (IOCC), led by Island Conservation, Re:wild, and UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has added three of New Zealand’s most ecologically rich islands into its ambitious effort to restore and rewild 40 globally significant island-ocean ecosystems by 2030.  The Department of Conservation and Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust have joined the IOCC to boost conservation efforts on sub-Antarctic Auckland Island, Stewart Island and the Chatham Islands.  The addition of these three projects brings the total number of committed island-ocean ecosystems to 20 (click here).

Efforts are now being made to raise the necessary funds for the three restoration efforts.  Read more about the New Zealand island eradication plans here.

Scalped!  A Grey-headed Albatross chick after nocturnal attacks by mice on Marion Island, photograph by Ben Dilley

Previously BirdLife South Africa joined the IOCC by listing sub-Antarctic Marion Island, where the Mouse-Free Marion Project is working towards eradicating its albatross- and petrel-killing House Mice. Read more about Marion Island’s listing with the IOCC here and here.

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

Biz Bell bands a Black Petrel on Great Barrier Island

The ACAP-listed and globally Vulnerable Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni is a New Zealand endemic that breeds on Great and Little Barrier Islands at the edge of North Island’s Hauraki Gulf.  The breeding colony on the upper slopes of Mount Hobson/Hirakimata on the former island has been studied for many years by the New Zealand-based ecological consultancy Wildlife Management International, with burrows marked and monitored every breeding season.  Adults and chicks close to fledging are banded for identification but fewer fledglings than might be expected have been returning to the study colony to prospect for burrows as young adults and commence breeding.

An illustrated article recently published online by RZN News describes the 29-year study and considers what might be happening to the birds in their first few years at sea.  The article states “… on average, more than 70 percent of petrel parents monitored by the survey successfully fledge a chick each year.  But of the thousands of chicks that have been banded over the decades, only about 10 percent of them have ever been found again.  What happens to the rest is still largely a mystery”.

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

In the article, the Managing Director of Wildlife Management International Elizabeth ‘Biz’ Bell is quoted as saying "We've banded over 5500 chicks over the 29 years and we've had less than 500 return.  Is that because we can't search this entire, massive island and they're somewhere else?  Are they dying at sea?  Are they dying on migration?  Are they dying in fishing boats? Are they dying from pollution events, climate change?  It's one of our biggest gaps of knowledge.”

Black Petrels are known to be caught on long lines.  Adoption and implementation of ACAP-approved best-practice mitigation measures by fisheries throughout the species’ at-sea range is required to reduce the numbers of fledglings assumed to being drowned on hooks.

With thanks to Susan Waugh for information.

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

Graphical abstract from the publication

Yasmina Rodríguez (Instituto de Investigação em Ciências do Mar, Universidade dos Açores, Horta, Portugal) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Marine Environmental Research on plastic ingestion by Cory/s Shearwaters Calonectris borealis.  They show that breeding birds “clear out” >80% of their ingested plastics by regurgitating them to their chicks.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Plastic ingestion has been extensively studied in seabirds.  However, knowledge gaps remain in understanding how plastic loads behave over time and their residence inside Procellariforms.  This study investigated the temporal dynamics of ingested plastics by adult Cory's shearwaters (Calonectris borealis) during the breeding season to shed light on plastic retention times.  We analysed the plastic content in the stomachs of 96 adults collected from 2015 to 2022 in the Azores archipelago (NE Atlantic) across distinct nesting periods: pre-laying, incubation, and chick-rearing. Our results revealed a general decrease in plastic loads over the breeding season, resulting in a marked reduction in the number of plastics before the winter pelagic phase. We found that plastic contents in breeders are mainly influenced by the intergenerational transfer of this contaminant to the offspring, indicating that progenitors highly reduce the concentrations of plastics from the stomachs (>80%) during the chick-rearing period. Understanding temporal patterns and retention time of plastic litter in seabirds is crucial for using them as indicators, with our results supporting fledglings of the studied species as the preferable age for fulfilling such a role in the breeding areas. Cory's shearwater breeders may contain plastics from their far-away wintering foraging grounds at the beginning of the breeding season, which would reflect plastics ingested in their transoceanic migrations or wintering regions beyond their breeding colonies. Moreover, they reset their plastic loads when nesting leading to underestimations if they are used as sentinels of plastic contamination during or after chick-rearing”.

Reference:

Rodríguez, Y., Rodríguez, A., Pereira, J.M. & Pham, C.K. 2025.  Plastics reset in an adult Procellariform seabird species during the breeding season.  Marine Environmental Research 204. 106939.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 25 February 2025