For five years or so members of the Ocean View Association for Persons with Disabilities (OVAPD) in the southern part of the Cape Peninsula have been making bird-scaring lines for South African long liners and trawlers (click here).

This year a number of association members got to see albatrosses and other seabirds at sea for the first time on an ocean-going cruise south of Cape Town organized by BirdLife South Africa as part of its 2017 AGM “Flock at Sea”.  BirdLife South Africa reports:

“When the members of the Ocean View Association for Persons with Disabilities (OVAPD) boarded the MSC Sinfonia, the joy and excitement on their faces was heart-warming. Until now the closest they had got to an albatross was the stuffed Wandering Albatross that the Albatross Task Force keeps for educational purposes. Not only was this the first time that many of them would be going out into the open ocean, but it was their first opportunity to see the birds that their bird-scaring lines are instrumental in protecting.

'A Sooty Albatross to the right!' the seabird guide shouted. There it was, the first albatross sighting for the team. Describing the experience, Ronald Stevens [of OVAPD] said, 'To see a live albatross is the most amazing thing, and for us to know that we help save them is wonderful.'

The proudest moment for the OVAPD team came when they were invited onto the stage at the start of the Albatross Task Force lecture describing the success that bird-scaring lines have had in reducing seabird bycatch. This was the formal recognition of their important contribution to seabird conservation.”

Members of OVAPD construct a bird-scaring line

Read more here and here on OVAPD’s contributions to seabird conservation.

Farther north in southern Africa bird-scaring lines for use on fishing vessels in Namibia are manufactured by the Meme Itumbapo Women’s Group, made up of hitherto unemployed women working from their headquarters “Bird’s Paradise,” in Walvis Bay (click here and here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 28 June 2017

Wildbase Hospital, attached to Massey University, is New Zealand's only dedicated wildlife hospital, treating numbers of birds, including those listed as globally threatened.

Recently (11 June), the hospital received an ACAP-listed Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus, thought to be a juvenile by its uniform brown plumage, that had been found in a distressed state “floundering in the sea” by surfers at Castlecliff, on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.  Wildbase Co-director Brett Gartrell said an initial X-ray showed nothing wrong. A flexible fibre-optic gastroscope was then fed into the bird’s stomach under general anaesthesia then found that plastic items were causing the distress (click here).

The Southern Giant Petrel is held by Wildbase Director Brett Gartrell, photograph by Murray Wilson/Fairfax NZ

The plastic items the petrel had swallowed are displayed

“X-rays, which are taken from every bird who enters the hospital, cannot detect latex or plastic in the animal's stomach and is often only found during a post mortem examination.  The plastic can sit in an animal’s stomach preventing other food from being digested, can cause irritation to the stomach’s lining, gastric ulcers, or in rare cases can move into the intestines and cause more serious obstructions.  [It] can cause ulcers of the gut and erode the stomach."

The plastic items were removed from the bird's stomach (see the video) and the bird is now recovering at Wildbase.  “We pulled out a whole spoon, pink balloon and some sharp unidentifiable plastic.  The team was very excited to remove the contents from the stomach, but the sad thing is that many animals who swallow plastic will die before they make it to us.”

Read more here.

Read of other procellariform seabirds that have ingested balloons here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 27 June 2017

Peter Ryan (FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa) and colleagues have published in the journal Polar Biology on the distribution of the Short-tailed Shearwater Ardenna tenuirostris in the Southern Ocean.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Short-tailed Shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris are transequatorial migrants that breed at islands in southern Australia and spend the austral winter in the North Pacific. Adults feeding chicks undertake long foraging trips into Antarctic waters (to 70°S) across a broad longitudinal range (mainly 55–180°E). In mid-March 2017, we observed thousands of shearwaters in the vicinity of Bouvetøya (from 55°S 0°E to 50°S 8°E). These observations occurred more than 2000 km west of the documented range of this species, and raise the possibility that some Short-tailed Shearwaters migrate to the North Atlantic Ocean. Further observations are needed to determine whether this is a regular behaviour that has been overlooked in the past due to confusion with Sooty Shearwaters A. grisea, or whether 2017 was an unusual year for Short-tailed Shearwaters.”

Short-tailed Shearwaters off Buvet Island, photographs by Peter Ryan

With thanks to Peter Ryan.

Reference:

Ryan, P.G., Le Bouard, F. & Lee, J. 2017.  Westward range extension of Short-tailed Shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris in the Southern Ocean.  Polar Biology doi:10.1007/s00300-017-2146-8.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 June 2017

Henri Weimerskirch (CNRS-CEBC, Villiers-en-Bois, France) and colleagues have published in the journal Conservation Biology on using Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans to detect the radar emissions from and thus the whereabouts of fishing vessels in the Southern Ocean.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Despite international waters covering over 60% of the world's oceans, our understanding of how fisheries in these regions shape ecosystem processes is surprisingly poor. Seabirds are known to forage at fishing vessels, with potential deleterious effects for their population, but the extent of overlap and behavior in relation to ships are poorly known. Using novel biologging devices, which can detect radar emissions to record the position of boats and seabirds, we measured the true extent of the overlap between seabirds and fishing vessels, and generated estimates of the intensity of fishing and distribution of vessels in international waters. During breeding, wandering albatrosses from the Crozet islands patrolled an area of more than 10 million square kilometers and as much as 79.5% of birds equipped with loggers detected vessels, at distances up to 2500 km from the colony, modifying their natural foraging behavior to attend boats. The extent of this overlap has widespread implications for bycatch risk in seabirds and reveals the areas of intense fishing throughout the ocean. We suggest that seabirds equipped with radar detectors are excellent monitors of the presence of vessels in the southern ocean, offering a new way to monitor fisheries. The method used opens new perspectives to monitor the presence of illegal fisheries and to better understand the impact of fisheries on seabirds.”

A Wandering Albatross at sea (with a Pintado Petrel), photograph by Sebastian Jimenez

Read more here.

Reference:

Weimerskirch, H., Filippi, D.P., Collet, J., Waugh, S.M. & Patrick, S.C. 2017.  Use of radar detectors to track attendance of albatrosses at fishing vessels.  Conservation Biology doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12965.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 23 June 2017