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MFM Project ambassador Chris Jones powers through a 5-km parkrun in the Harold Porter National Botanical Garden, photograph from the Betty’s Bay Parkrun Facebook page
The Saving Marion Island’s Seabirds: the Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project marked World Albatross Day (WAD2026) and its theme of “Habitat Restoration” in South Africa on 19 June with a suite of activities in Betty’s Bay. Three members of the Mouse-Free Marion Runners group drove the 100 km from Cape Town to the coastal village along False Bay’s spectacular Clarence Drive to meet up with long-time MFM Project ambassadors and local residents Chris Jones and Michelle Risi on the afternoon of World Albatross Day. Chris and Michelle have recently registered at the University of Cape Town for PhDs, with Chris studying climate-change impacts on albatrosses breeding on Marion Island and Michelle studying the demography of giant petrels Macronectes spp. on several sub-Antarctic islands, including Marion where they are threatened by introduced House Mice. Back in 2019, Michelle first proposed to the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) that it hold a World Albatross Day, now in its seventh year.
Defying the wind. From left: Chris Jones, Michelle Risi and John Cooper, MFM News Correspondent, at the Stony Point penguin colony – in our MFM activity shirts
The whole African Continent (and its coastal islands) supports no breeding albatrosses, so the first stop to mark “WAD2026” was a visit to the Stony Point Nature Reserve where Critically Endangered African Penguins Spheniscus demersus breed on the mainland. Honorary albatrosses, if you will! The friendly Cape Nature ranger on site took the required photo with a MFM Project pop-up banner on display. Following this outing we got out of the wind to sample what is becoming a global phenomenon marking World Albatross Day – an “albicake”!
Michelle Risi decorated her home-baked “albicake” from her own photo of an Endangered Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross Thalassarche chlororhynchos on Gough Island, photograph by John Cooper
We were joined for tea ‘n cake by MFM Runners (and MFM fund raisers), Jeremy George and Erica Leppan. A most pleasant way to celebrate the seventh World Albatross Day, first held in 2020.
Michelle, along with husband Chris, cuts her cake for afternoon tea; there were also “albicupcakes”, photograph by John Cooper
Befitting a running group, the next morning we participated in the 348th holding of Betty’s Bay Parkrun. Held in the Harold Porter National Botanical Garden, the 5-km fun run must be one of the most spectacular in the country with its up and down sections among indigenous vegetation, including flowering proteas.
“All shout Albatross!” Moments before the parkrun got underway, photograph by Jeremy George
With MFM Project’s pop-up banners on display and after a few introductory words to the 223 assembled runners about the MFM Project (and the obligatory shout of “Albatross!”) the parkrun got underway.
Erica Leppan and John Cooper attempt to fly like an albatross in their MFM active shirts on one of the parkrun’s gradual climbs, photograph by Andrea Angel
Some of the MFM Runners celebrate after the parkrun. From left: Michelle Risi, John Cooper, Emeritus Professor Peter Ryan (who chairs the 50-member MFM Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (behind), Andrea Angel, Manager of BirdLife South Africa’s Albatross Task Force and Chris Jones, photograph by Jeremy George
John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 06 July 2026
World Seabird Day commemorates the extinction of the Great Auk, logo design by the World Seabird Union
