Registration, abstract submission, and travel award applications for the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group (PSG) are now open.

The Meeting, the PSG’s 45th, will be held at the at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur in La Paz, Mexico over 21-24 February 2018. The locality is at the entrance to the Gulf of California.

Laysan Albatross pair on Mexico's Guadalupe Island, photograph by Ross Wanless

There will be oral and poster sessions (themes: Behaviour, Breeding Biology, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Contaminants & Marine Debris, Fisheries, Foraging Ecology, Genetics, Management,Policy, and/or Planning, Non-breeding Biology, Physiology, Population Biology, Tools & Techniques, and Tracking & Distribution) along with plenary speakers as is usual at PSG annual meetings. Excursions into the gulf will view whales and whale sharks.

A Special Paper Session is planned on seabird restoration to be convened by Yuliana Bedoya.  The session description follows:

“Seabird populations around the world have declined due to different threats such as invasive alien species, contaminants, oil spills, bycatch, fisheries, climate change, and ocean acidification. Conventional restoration actions –the eradication of invasive mammals, habitat restoration- alone are inadequate to effectively restore seabird colonies that were extirpated or decimated. Increasingly, restoration projects in the Pacific Ocean are supplemented with active seabird restoration to ensure the recolonization and recovery of breeding colonies. This special paper session will present a wide variety of ambitious projects that currently employ novel techniques to restore seabird populations (social attraction techniques, translocation). Papers will include case studies from the Channel Islands, Hawaiian Islands, Mexican Pacific islands, and others. Talks will present different methods, recent success histories, and the adaptive management to succeed. The seabird restoration projects can be used as models for future projects. The session will conclude with a roundtable group discussion.”

Read more on PSG2018.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 28 September 2017

Andrés Domingo (Laboratorio de Recursos Pelágicos, Dirección Nacional de Recursos Acuáticos, Montevideo, Uruguay) and colleagues have published open access in the journal PLoS One on using bird-scaring lines on pelagic longline vessels to reduce seabird mortalities in the south-west Atlantic.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Industrial longline fisheries cause the death of large numbers of seabirds annually. Various mitigation measures have been proposed, including the use of tori lines. In this study the efficiency of a single tori line to reduce seabird bycatch was tested on pelagic longline vessels (25-37 m length). Thirteen fishing trips were carried out in the area and season of the highest bycatch rates recorded in the southwest Atlantic (2009–2011). We deployed two treatments in random order: sets with a tori line and without a tori line (control treatment). The use of a tori line significantly reduced seabird bycatch rates. Forty three and seven birds were captured in the control (0.85 birds/1,000 hooks, n = 49 sets) and in the tori line treatment (0.13 birds/1,000 hooks, n = 51 sets), respectively. In 47% of the latter sets the tori line broke either because of entanglement with the longline gear or by tension. This diminished the tori line effectiveness; five of the seven captures during sets where a tori line was deployed were following ruptures. Nine additional trips were conducted with a tori line that was modified to reduce entanglements (2012–2016). Seven entanglements were recorded in 73 longline sets. The chance of a rupture on these trips was 4% (95% c.l. = 1–18%) of that during 2009–2011. This work shows that the use of a tori line reduces seabird bycatch in pelagic longline fisheries and is a practice suitable for medium size vessels (~25-40 m length). Because the study area has historically very high bycatch rates at global level, this tori line design is potentially useful to reduce seabird bycatch in many medium size pelagic longline vessel fishing in the southern hemisphere.”

A bird-scaring line keeps seabirds away off Uruguay, photograph by Domingo Jimenez, courtesy of Andrés Domingo

With thanks to Andrés Domingo.

Reference:

Domingo, A., Jiménez, S., Abreu, M., Forselledo, R. & Yates, O. 2017. Effectiveness of tori line use to reduce seabird bycatch in pelagic longline fishing. PLoS One 12(9): doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184465.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 September 2017

Tony Martin (Centre for Remote Environments, University of Dundee, UK) and Mike Richardson have published open access in the conservation journal Oryx on the eradication attempt made to remove introduced rodents on the island of South Georgia/Islas Georgias del Sur*.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The Subantarctic island of South Georgia lost most of its birds to predation by rodents introduced by people over 2 centuries. In 2011 a UK charity began to clear brown rats Rattus norvegicus and house mice Mus musculus from the 170 km long, 3,500 km island using helicopters to spread bait containing Brodifacoum as the active ingredient. South Georgia’s larger glaciers were barriers to rodent movement, resulting in numerous independent sub-island populations. The eradication could therefore be spread over multiple seasons, giving time to evaluate results before recommencing, and also reducing the impact of non-target mortality across the island as a whole. Eradication success was achieved in the 170 km Phase 1 trial operation. Work in 2013 (Phase 2) and early 2015 (Phase 3) covered the remaining 128 km occupied by rodents. By July 2017, 28 months after baiting was concluded, there was no sign of surviving rodents, other than one apparently newly introduced by ship in October 2014. A survey using detection dogs and passive devices will search the Phase 2 and Phase 3 land for rodents in early 2018. Seven (of 30) species of breeding birds suffered losses from poisoning, but all populations appear to have recovered within 5 years. The endemic South Georgia pipit Anthus antarcticus was the first bird to breed in newly rat-free areas, but there were also signs that cavity-nesting seabirds were exploring scree habitat denied them for generations. Enhanced biosecurity measures on South Georgia are needed urgently to prevent rodents being reintroduced.

A helicopter flies over the island of South Georgia/Islas Georgias del Sur* spreading poison bait

Reference:

Martin, A.R. & Richardson, M.G. 2017. Rodent eradication scaled up: clearing rats and mice from South Georgia. Oryx doi.org/10.1017/S003060531700028.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 September 2017

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.

Rémi Fay (Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Villiers-en-Bois, France) and colleagues have published in the journal Ecological Monographs on differences in the quality of life-history traits in the Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Although population studies have long assumed that all individuals of a given sex and age are identical, ignoring among-individual differences may strongly bias our perception of eco-evolutionary processes. Individual heterogeneity, often referred to as individual quality, has received increasing research attention in the last decades. However, there are still substantial gaps in our current knowledge. For example, there is little information on how individual heterogeneity influences various life-history traits simultaneously, and studies describing individual heterogeneity in wild populations are generally not able to jointly identify possible sources of this variation. Here, based on a mark-recapture data set of 9,685 known-aged wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans), we investigated the existence of individual quality over the whole life cycle of this species, from early-life to senescence. Using finite mixture models, we investigated the expression of individual heterogeneity in various demographic traits, and examined the origin of these among-individual differences by considering the natal environmental conditions. We found that some individuals consistently outperformed others during most of their life. At old age, however, senescence rate was stronger in males that showed high demographic performance at younger ages. Variation in individual quality seemed strongly affected by extrinsic factors experienced during the ontogenetic period. We found that individuals born in years with high population density tended to have lower performances during their lifespan, suggesting delayed density dependence effects through individual quality. Our study showed that among-individual differences could be important in structuring individual life history trajectories, with substantial consequences at higher ecological levels such as population dynamics.”

A Wandering Albatross at its nest, photograph by Kate Lawrence

Reference:

Fay, R., Barbraud, C., Delord, K. & Weimerskirch, H. 2017. From early-life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long-lived seabird. Ecological Monographs. doi:10.1002/ecm.1275F.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 September 2017