The 46th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group will be held on the Hawaiian island of Kauai at the Aqua Kaua’i Beach Resort from 28 February to 3 March next year.  The meeting’s theme is “Seabirds in a Changing Pacific – Ensuring a Future, Fighting the Plastic.”  It is intended to link this theme with discussions and presentations on topics related to seabird ecology, behaviour, conservation and management.

The deadline to submit proposals for Special Paper Sessions or Symposia (a coherent set of papers intended to be published) and suggestions for plenary speakers is 15 August 2018.  The first call for abstracts will be made in September 2018.

The meeting’s "field trips will offer a range of adventure and, of course, the unique seabird encounters for which Kaua‘i is known”.  Kauai supports populations of ACAP-listed and globally Near Threatened Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis, such as at the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, with breeding underway at the time of the annual meeting.

Jessi Hallman Behnke and André Raine co-chair the Local Committee for the 46th Annual Meeting with David Craig as Scientific Program Chair.

Read more details of the meeting here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 18 July 2018

Jean-Baptiste Thiebot (National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan) and colleagues have published in the Journal of Ornithology on using a metal detector to inform interactions between globally Near Threatened Black-footed Albatrosses Phoebastria nigripes breeding on Torishima with a local artisanal longline fishery.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Incidental capture in fisheries (“bycatch”) is a major threat to global marine biodiversity, especially to those species with low fecundity, such as albatrosses. Efforts to reduce bycatch have been undertaken in industrial fisheries, but the scale of seabird interactions with artisanal or small-scale fleets remains largely unknown. The island of Torishima (Japan) is an important breeding site for two albatross species (short-tailed Phoebastria albatrus and black-footed P. nigripes) and also lies in the range of the artisanal longline fishery for the splendid alfonsino Beryx splendens. In February–March 2017, we tracked 23 foraging trips of adult P. nigripes feeding chicks by Global Positioning System (GPS) and monitored the prevalence of fishing gear at the nests using a metal detector. The foraging range of these albatrosses was a maximum of 280 km from Torishima, and only 3.7% of the GPS locations occurred over the shallow habitats targeted by the alfonsino fishery (water depth 150–500 m), suggesting relatively low risks of interaction. However, 190 (54.3%) nests of P. nigripes contained fishing gear, among which 12 (3.4%) nests or chicks contained a hook or an unidentified metallic object. Six hooks were also collected from P. albatrus nests. All found hooks, except one, originated from the alfonsino fishery, indicating that both targeted albatross species actually interacted with this fishery at sea. Both research approaches provided data from returning birds only and did not reflect possible lethal cases at sea. Monitoring the sub-lethal effects of bycatch and encouraging small-scale fisheries to report gear lost at sea are two possibilities to further help quantify and reduce the impact of fisheries on seabirds.”

"A case of detected metal inside a chick. The observer (Bungo Nishizawa) first tests the sensitivity of the metal detector on his wristwatch, then checks the area around and inside the nest, and finally passes the detector against the chick’s belly.  Video taken by J.-B. Thiebot"

Reference:

Thiebot, J.-B., Nishizawa, B., Sato, F., Tomita, N. & Watanuki, Y. 2018.  Albatross chicks reveal interactions of adults with artisanal longline fisheries within a short range.  Journal of Ornithology doi.org/10.1007/s10336-018-1579-3. [see video of metal detector in use in supplementary material).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 17 July 2018

UPDATE.  Nine transmitters were still working by  23 July.  Click here to view a 'hotspot' map. There is one very obvious hotspot of activity in a sea area approximately 1000-1500 km SW of the Galapagos Islands, with another hotspot of activity in the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands themselves".

Fourteen globally and nationally Vulnerable Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni chicks were tagged with satellite trackers by the ecological consultancy  Wildlife Management International at their Mount Hobson breeding colony on New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island in May 2018 in an endeavour to find out more about the at-sea movements of this ACAP-listed species as pre-breeding juveniles.  The study was initiated as a consequence of the poor return rate of banded juveniles as first-time breeders.

At the most recent report 11 of the 14 transmitters were still functioning.  The birds have followed similar routes eastwards across the Pacific towards South America.  They have been mostly concentrating their activity in an area of ocean approximately 1500 -1900 km SSW of the Galapagos Islands, although three birds are now close to the Galapagos and one has travelled on to come close to the South American coast.  The total distance travelled by the young birds to date is given as 160 733 km, averaging 11 480 km per bird.  Follow the petrels’ future movements (until the transmitter batteries run out) here.

Black Petrel at sea, photograph by 'Biz' Bell

A Black Petrel chick is fitted with a satellite transmitter, photograph from Samantha Ray, Wildlife Management International

Fledgling Black Petrel tracks by 15 July.  The crosses mark the last known positions of three birds that are no longer reporting

Read more here.

Earlier in the 2017/18 breeding season adult Black Petrels feeding chicks on Mount Hobson were satellite tracked by Wildlife Management International, revealing that they were making 5000 - 6000-km foraging trips “as far away as the east coast of Australia, or far to the east of the Chatham Islands”.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 16 July 2018

Back at the end of May this year ACAP Latest News reported that satellite tags had been attached to globally Endangered Grey-headed Albatross Thalassarche chrysostoma chicks prior to their departure from Bird Island by the British Antarctic Survey in order to determine their overlap with fisheries and to obtain data on juvenile survival.  Evidence from fishing vessels suggests that immature Grey-heads are killed by pelagic longline fisheries in areas that are not used regularly by non-breeding adults (click here).

Nine of the tagged birds fledged in early June and started moving north-eastwards in the South Atlantic.  Two came close to the South African coast and most have now passed below the southern tip of Africa crossing into the southern Indian Ocean.

Follow their further movements and distances travelled online with regular updates here.

See also a report by BirdLife International (which helped fund the research) on the tracked birds and the decrease in breeding numbers of Grey-headed Albatrosses on Bird Island that part-motivated the study.

Then and now: photomontage of a Grey-headed Albatross study colony on Bird Island by British Antarctic Survey, courtesy of BirdLife International

With thanks to Richard Phillips, British Antarctic Society and Stephanie Winnard, BirdLife International.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 13 July 2018