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Book review: “Seabirds beyond the Mountain Crest”, an account of Hutton’s Shearwater by Richard Cuthbert

I read Richard Cuthbert’s recently published book on the globally Endangered Hutton’s Shearwater Puffinus huttoni by head torch over two nights in field huts on New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island while tramping the Aotea Track last month after attending ACAP meetings in Wellington. Fitting, I think, as I was on the track to visit the mountain breeding site of another of the country’s endemic burrowing seabirds, the ACAP-listed and globally Vulnerable Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni on the upper slopes of Mount Hobson Hirikimata.

New Zealand works hard to look after its many seabird species. The Black Petrel has its champion, Elizabeth ‘Biz’ Bell of the consultancy Wildlife Management International who continues with her annual breeding studies when not eradicating invasive mammals on seabird islands around the world. Hutton’s Shearwater that breeds in mountains inland of Kaikoura on South Island has also had its champions, notably mountain climber Geoff Harrow QSM who discovered its then unknown breeding sites in the Seaward Kaikoura Mountain Range in 1964/65. Years later Geoff helped found the Hutton’s Shearwater Charitable Trust in 2008, of which he is now its patron. The trust rescues and releases fledglings downed by Kaikoura’s street lights and also monitors a fenced sanctuary known as Te Rae o Atiu close to sea level where hand-reared chicks translocated over the period 2005 to 2013 are now returning to breed safe from introduced predators.

In September 1996 English biology graduate Richard Cuthbert, along with a colleague, a field hut and supplies, is dropped off by helicopter in the Kowhai Valley in the Seaward Kaikoura Mountains to commence his PhD research on Hutton’s Shearwater. For three summer seasons Richard works out of the hut in the valley, helped by a number of field assistants, most importantly Erica Sommer, now his wife.  Even Sir David Attenborough drops in for a filming visit!  His PhD is awarded by the University of Otago in 1999 and a suite of eight peer-reviewed publications on Hutton’s Shearwater follows in peer-reviewed  ornithological journals over the next four years.

Richard Cuthbert in a favoured environment: a sub-Antarctic seabird island in the South Atlantic in 2012

Following their field work in New Zealand, Richard and Erica spend a year on Gough Island in the South Atlantic over 2000/01, studying its seabirds that are threatened by House Mice, and over a number of follow-up visits on annual relief voyages, the mice themselves. This essential work has led directly to the welcome (and long-awaited) announcement last month that Gough’s “killer” mice are to be eradicated in 2019 (click here). I have worked with Richard on Gough where I experienced his impressive hill-walking speed while climbing with (well, actually behind) him to a long-term study colony of the globally Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena in Gonydale - that I set up in 2006. This hill-walking ability was critical to his study of Hutton’s Shearwater, as becomes apparent as one reads his book, launched in September in Kaikoura as the shearwaters return to breed once more.

Seabirds beyond the Mountain Crest is, quite simply, a great read. The author skilfully interweaves the shearwater's known history since its first description and Harrow’s dedicated explorations with evocative accounts of his own field work. Starting with an account of the species’ discovery and naming (and clearing up some mysteries on the way), Richard Cuthbert goes on to describe his first arrival in the Kowhai Valley. Chapters describing field work in all weathers, with the odd climbing outing, follow. Information on the breeding biology of the shearwater is interspersed with encounters of other animals present in the valley. The inquisitive Kea, a mountain parrot is not always welcomed when trying to sleep in the field hut: “…the kea amused themselves by … galloping in unison from one end of the roof to the other…”.

Previously it had been mooted that introduced Stoats were causing low breeding success, loss of colonies and a shrinkage of the shearwater’s population. Richard with Erica’s assistance study the Stoats’ diet (by collecting and dissecting  their scats) and movements by radio-tracking and convincingly show that it is not them but actually predation and habitat destruction by feral pigs that is the primary cause. His surveys find that colonies abandoned since their discovery in the 1960s by Geoff Harrow are all accessible to pigs, whereas the two remaining active colonies are not.  As a consequence control of pig numbers has been undertaken by hunting and trapping near his study colony in the Kowhai Valley.

A Hutton's Shearwater at its mountain burrow entrance, photograph by Richard Cuthbert

 

 Erica Sommer fits a radio tag to a Stoat, photograph by Richard Cuthbert

The book is nicely set out with a number of half- and full-page colour photos. The science is well explained at the level of the informed layperson without the need for tables and graphs. As a long-term reviewer and editor of scientific works I was pleased to spot no typos from my torch-lit sleeping bag, so well done to the author and to Otago University Press.

Seabirds beyond the Mountain Crest ends with an account of the November 2016 earthquake centred on Kaikoura that has severely impacted at least one of the two mountain colonies (click here). It is not as yet known how many shearwaters that were then in their burrows were killed. Richard Cuthbert writes that he is planning to return to Kaikoura in December to help investigate the situation at the breeding sites.  Let’s hope the news is not all bad, and the shearwater he studied and now has written about so engagingly continues to survive in its mountain haunts.

Book cover from a painting by Austen Deans

With thanks to Richard Cuthbert and Victor Billot of Otago University Press.

Reference:

Cuthbert, R.J. 2017. Seabirds beyond the Mountain Crest. The History, Natural History and Conservation of Hutton’s Shearwater.  Dunedin: Otago University Press. 212 pp. Paperback. 240 x 170 mm.  ISBN 978-0-947522-64-3. NZ$ 45. www.otago.ac.nz/press.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 05 October 2017

Orientation of Streaked Shearwaters flying at sea in relation to wind

Yusuke Goto (Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan) and colleagues have published in the journal Science Advanceson a study of GPS tracking data set from globally Near Threatened Streaked Shearwaters Calonectris leucomelas at sea.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Numerous flying and swimming animals constantly need to control their heading (that is, their direction of orientation) in a flow to reach their distant destination. However, animal orientation in a flow has yet to be satisfactorily explained because it is difficult to directly measure animal heading and flow. We constructed a new animal movement model based on the asymmetric distribution of the GPS (Global Positioning System) track vector along its mean vector, which might be caused by wind flow. This statistical model enabled us to simultaneously estimate animal heading (navigational decision-making) and ocean wind information over the range traversed by free-ranging birds. We applied this method to the tracking data of homing seabirds. The wind flow estimated by the model was consistent with the spatiotemporally coarse wind information provided by an atmospheric simulation model. The estimated heading information revealed that homing seabirds could head in a direction different from that leading to the colony to offset wind effects and to enable them to eventually move in the direction they intended to take, even though they are over the open sea where visual cues are unavailable. Our results highlight the utility of combining large data sets of animal movements with the “inverse problem approach,” enabling unobservable causal factors to be estimated from the observed output data. This approach potentially initiates a new era of analyzing animal decision-making in the field.”

Streaked Shearwater 

Read a popular account of the study here.

Reference:

Goto, Y., Yoda, K. & Sato, K. 2017. Asymmetry hidden in birds’ tracks reveals wind, heading, and orientation ability over the ocean. Science Advances 3(9). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700097.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 04 October 2017

New Zealand’s Spatially Explicit Fisheries Risk Assessment to determine if seabirds are at unacceptable risk gets reviewed

Spatially Explicit Fisheries Risk Assessment (SEFRA) is a method that has been developed in New Zealand for determining whether current levels of bycatch of seabird and mammal populations from marine fisheries constitute an unacceptable risk.  SEFRA has now been the subject of an expert review.

The review report’s executive summary follows:

“Spatially Explicit Fisheries Risk Assessment (SEFRA) is a method that has been developed in New Zealand for determining whether current levels of fisheries bycatch impose unacceptable risks to seabird and mammal populations. It is designed to use sparse information and makes a clear distinction between the effects of uncertainty and management precaution. This document reports the conclusions of a review of SEFRA carried out in June 2017. The review process used draft documents describing the method and included two days of presentations from the main developers of SEFRA, given in an open meeting involving other interested parties. After deliberation, the Panel’s draft findings were presented back to the open meeting for discussion; however, this report is solely the work of the four independent Panel members.

Our main conclusion is that SEFRA is a high quality method. It has been carefully thought out and implemented. We consider it to be a very useful tool, and hope it will become more widely known and used. We have, however, identified some areas that might benefit from further work.

The core of SEFRA is a detailed Bayesian model. The model is a good representation of the main features of the system but many of its prior distributions rely on sparse data or information elicited from experts. We feel that these should be re-examined to check their appropriateness and effects on the results. The treatment of over dispersion also needs to be standardised, and the assumptions around the linearity of effects and non-selectivity of bycatch considered.

All the models use a fixed value, of 0.2, for the coefficient of variability of abundances resulting from environmental variability. That parameter value is important to the conclusions of the models and requires further investigation. For seabirds the effects of unavailability while nesting, and the inclusion of populations that nest outside New Zealand need consideration. Some thought about the potential for interactions between species would be useful. We would also like to see further simulation and sensitivity testing, with particular emphasis on model misspecification and the characteristics of marine mammal populations.

The approach defines “Risk Ratio” as its main measure of how well bycaught species can be expected to do in the long term. At a simple level, low values are considered to be good, and high ones bad. The intuitive threshold for acceptability is 1, but some of the flexibility of the approach comes from the ability to choose other reference values. We feel that additional work is needed on the interpretation of differences from reference values (for example: how much worse, given a reference of 1, is 1.4 than 1.2?), and that alternative ways of communicating this information should be considered.

In general, we feel that the scientific component of SEFRA is well developed but may have got ahead of the wider management system it sits within. Even within the current implementations there are differences that suggest that communication between the developers has not always been perfect. It is important that both conservation and fisheries managers are included in future discussions to provide appropriate targets for species and ensure that the managers and other stakeholders understand the outputs and limitations of the method.”

Buller's Albatross - endemic to New Zealand; photograph by Jean-Claude Stahl

With thanks to Richard Phillips.

Reference:

Lonergan, M.E., Phillips, R.A., Thomson, R.B. & Zhou, S. 2017. Independent review of New Zealand’s Spatially Explicit Fisheries Risk Assessment approach – 2017. New Zealand Fisheries Science Review 2017/2. 36 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 October 2017

PhD opportunity: studying the foraging of albatrosses on Midway Atoll

An opportunity exists to study the foraging of albatrosses from Midway Atoll in the North Pacific. The atoll supports large populations of Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes and Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses. Details follow.

“We are looking for a highly motivated PhD student with experience in programming and statistical modeling to join the Thorne Lab to work on an NSF-funded study of North Pacific albatross foraging energetics in relation to wind variability. The student will lead analyses of albatross movement, behavior and energetic expenditure, and will conduct field studies at Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Preferred qualifications/ skills include an MSc in Biology or a related field and experience working with movement data and statistics in R or Matlab. Experience handling birds and working at remote field sites would be advantageous but is not required. The anticipated start is in summer of 2018. Interested applicants should send a CV and cover letter outlining research interests and relevant experience to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by October 31.

Black-footed and Laysan Albatrosses on Midway Atoll, photograph by Pete Leary

The Thorne Lab is a research laboratory in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York, USA.

“Our work focuses on understanding biological and oceanographic processes underlying spatial patterns in the habitat use and foraging ecology of marine predators (primarily marine mammals and seabirds). We use a combination of boat-based measurements, telemetry techniques, satellite data and spatial analyses to address ecological questions, and are primarily focused on issues with a direct application in conservation.”

Read more on the Thorne Lab’s research on North Pacific albatrosses.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 October 2017

Tristan Albatross to be saved from extinction? Eradication of Gough Island’s “killer” mice is to go ahead in 2019

The United Kingdom’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) announced last week that the long-awaited attempt to eradicate introduced House Mice Mus musculus on Gough Island in the South Atlantic is set to take place in 2019 (click here).

Gough’s oversized “killer” mice have become well known for their attacks on seabird chicks on the island, leading most notably to unsustainably low breeding success for the near endemic and globally Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena and the endemic and globally Endangered Atlantic Petrel Pterodroma incerta. Both species rear their chicks in winter when alternative food sources for mice are scarce.  Other seabird species on the island, especially the burrowing petrels, are also known or thought to be impacted by mice.

A Tristan Albatross chick close to death after being eaten alive by mice, photograph by Sylvain Dromzee & Karen Bourgeois

“While we still have a funding shortfall, thanks to generous financial support from the UK Government, the [USA's] National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and other sources, we are now sufficiently confident to plan the mouse eradication operation to start in 2019.” Contributions to the costs of the operation can be made via an appeal by the RSPB (click here).

Read more about the RSPB’s Gough Island Restoration Programme here.

The go-ahead announcement was also made by the United Kingdom Delegation to the 4th Meeting of ACAP's Population and Conservation Working Group held  in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this month.  The news was met with warm support from the working group (See AC10 Doc 11 Rev 1).

The decision to attempt a mouse eradication by poison bait drop was made after over a decade of concerted research on the island by UK and South African scientists, resulting in a large suite of papers and reports on the impacts of mice on Gough’s seabirds and that address questions towards their eradication raised by a feasibility study by New Zealand eradication expert, John Parkes. A selected list of these publications follows.

Click here to access the over a hundred previous articles in ACAP Latest News on Gough’s mice and their depredations on the island’s avifauna.

Selected Literature:

Angel, A. & Cooper, J. 2006. A review of the impacts of introduced rodents on the Islands of Tristan da Cunha and Gough (South Atlantic). RSPB Research Report No. 17. Sandy: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.  64 pp.

Angel, A, Wanless, R.M. & Cooper, J. 2008. Review of impacts of the introduced House Mouse on islands in the Southern Ocean: are mice equivalent to rats? Biological Invasions 11: 1743-1754.

Anon. 2016. Gough Island Restoration Project. Sandy: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. 22 pp.

Cooper, J., Cuthbert, R.J. & Ryan, P.G. 2013. An overlooked biosecurity concern? Back-loading at islands supporting introduced rodents. Aliens: The Invasive Species Bulletin 33: 28-31.

Cuthbert, R,[J.] & Hilton, G. 2004.  Introduced house mice Mus musculus: a significant predator of threatened and endemic birds on Gough Island, South Atlantic Ocean?  Biological Conservation 117: 483-489.

Cuthbert, R.J., Broome, K., Bradley, J. & Ryan, P.G. 2014. Evaluating the effectiveness of aerial baiting operations for rodent eradications on cliffs on Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha. Conservation Evidence 11: 25-28.

Cuthbert, R.J., Cooper, J. & Ryan, P.G. 2013. Population trends and breeding success of albatrosses and giant petrels at Gough Island in the face of at-sea and on-land threats. Antarctic Science 26: 163-171.

Cuthbert, R.J., Louw, H., Lurling, J. & Parker, G.  2013. Low burrow occupancy and breeding success of burrowing petrels at Gough Island: a consequence of mouse predation.  Bird Conservation International  23: 113-124.

Cuthbert, R.J., Louw, H., Parker, G., Rexer-Huber, K. & Visser, P. 2013. Observations of mice predation on dark-mantled sooty albatross and Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross chicks at Gough Island. Antarctic Science 25: 763-766.

Cuthbert, R.J., Parker, G., Louw, H., Rexer-Huber, K., Parker, G. & Ryan, P.G. 2011. Preparations for the eradication of mice from Gough Island: results of bait acceptance trials above ground and around cave systems. In: Veitch, C.R.,Clout, M.N. & Towns, D.R. (Eds). Island Invasives: Eradication and Management. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. pp. 47-50.

Cuthbert, R.J., Visser, P., Louw, H. & Ryan, P.G. 2011. Palatability and efficacy of rodent baits for eradicating house mice (Mus musculus) from Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha. Wildlife Research 38: 196-203.

Cuthbert, R.J., Wanless, R.M., Angel, A., Burlé, M.-H., Hilton, G.M., Louw, H., Visser, P., Wilson, J. & Ryan, P.G. 2016. Drivers of predatory behaviour and extreme body size in House Mice Mus musculus on Gough Island. Journal of Mammalogy 97: 533-544.

Davies, D., Dilley, B.J., Bond, A.L., Cuthbert, R.J. & Ryan, P.G. 2015. Trends and tactics of mouse predation on Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena chicks at Gough Island, South Atlantic Ocean. Avian Conservation and Ecology 10(1): 5. doi.org/10.5751/ACE-00738-100105.

Dilley, B.J., Davies, D., Bond, A.L. & Ryan, P.G. 2015. Effects of mouse predation on burrowing petrel chicks at Gough Island. Antarctic Science 27: 543-553.

Parkes, J. 2008. A Feasibility Study for the Eradication of House Mice from Gough Island. RSPB Research Report No. 34. Sandy: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. 52 pp.

Rexer‐Huber, K. & Parker, G. 2011. Captive Husbandry of the Gough Island Bunting and Moorhen. RSPB Research Report No. 42.  Sandy: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.  51 pp.

Ryan, P.G. & Cuthbert, R.J. 2008. The biology and conservation status of Gough Bunting Rowettia goughensisBulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club.  128: 242-253.

Tucker, G.M. & Underwood, E. 2016. Gough Island: an Assessment of its Status and Case for inclusion on the List of World Heritage in Danger.  London: Institute for European Environmental Policy.40 pp.

Wanless, R.M., Angel, A., Cuthbert, R.J., Hilton, G.M. & Ryan, P.G. 2007. Can predation by invasive mice drive seabird extinctions? Biology Letters 3: 241-244.

Wanless, R.M., Angel, A., Hilton, G.M. & Ryan, P.G. 2005. Cultural evolution in the introduced house mouse: evidence for the cultural transmission of a unique predatory behaviour on Gough Island. Paper delivered at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology Conference, Brasília, Brazil, 15-19 July 2005.

Wanless, R.M., Fisher, P., Cooper, J., Parkes. J. & Ryan, P.G. 2008. Bait acceptance by house mice: an island field trial. Wildlife Research 35: 806-811.

Wanless, R.M., Ryan, P.G., Altwegg, R., Angel, A., Cooper, J., Cuthbert, R. & Hilton, G.M. 2009. From both sides: dire demographic consequences of carnivorous mice and longlining for the critically endangered Tristan albatrosses on Gough Island. Biological Conservation 142: 1710-1718.

Wanless, R.M., Cooper, J., Slabber, M.J., & Ryan, P.G. 2010. Risk assessment of birds foraging terrestrially at Marion and Gough Islands to primary and secondary poisoning. Wildlife Research 37: 524-530.

Wanless, R.M., Ratcliffe, N., Angel, A., Bowie, B.C., Cita, K., Hilton, G.M., Kritzinger, P., Ryan, P.G. & Slabber, M. 2012. Predation of Atlantic petrel chicks by house mice on Gough Island. Animal Conservation 15: 472-479.

With thanks to John Kelly and Clare Stringer for information.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 29 September 2017, updated 02 October 2917

The Agreement on the
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ACAP is a multilateral agreement which seeks to conserve listed albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters by coordinating international activity to mitigate known threats to their populations.

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