Last week Mexico declared a large Marine Protected Area arounds it Revillagigedo Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The 150 000-km² MPA will be closed to fishing, oil and gas extraction and and development for tourism in the area; recreational diving will be allowed (click here).

The Reserva de la Biosfera Archipiélago de Revillagigedo, made up of four islands, and its surrounding waters were inscribed as a Ramsar Wetland Site of International Importance in 2004 with an area of 636 685 ha. Two of the four islands, Clarión and San Benedicto, support small breeding populations of globally Near Threatened Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses. The island group has been a Biosphere Reserve from 1994 and was made a World Heritage Natural Site in 2016.

An incubating Laysan Island on Clarion Island, photograph by Andrea Angel/Ross Wanless 

The islands are uninhabited except for a small Mexican naval presence.  Read more here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 01 December 2017

Two colour-banded Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis, female KP163 and male O289, both lost their mates when the fenced area at the Kaena Point Natural Area Reserve on the Hawaiian island of Oahu was entered at night and breeding birds killed and eggs smashed by intruders in December 2015. Following an extended period, three young individuals were arrested and following a court case, the intruder who was adult at the time received a prison sentence (click here).

The two widowed birds, O289 and KP163, pair up

The male O289 takes the first incubation shift

Two years later, and after missing a single breeding season the widowed birds have formed a pair and laid an egg. Lindsay Young of Pacific Rim Conservation, a non-profit organization which monitors the birds (and was instrumental in having the area fenced against predators) states that “many albatrosses will mate for life, so when one mate dies, it can take years for the widowed bird to find a new mate”. So with only one year off, the newly paired birds are contributing to the recovery of the globally Near Threatened Laysan Albatross in the reserve.

After killing incubating birds and smashing eggs a night-time intruder is caught exiting by a trail camera, photograph courtesy of Pacific Rim Conservation

With thanks to Lindsay Young, Pacific Rim Conservation.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 30 November 2017

Richard Veit (Department of Biology, College of Staten Island, New York, USA) and Nancy Harrison have reviewed interactions between seabirds, including procellariiforms, and other marine predators in the peer-reviewed and open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

“Our review here shows that interspecific foraging associations among seabirds and other top-level marine predators are an essential component of the life histories of these organisms influence the population growth of the constituent species, and therefore the community structure of the marine systems in which they live. The mixed-species associations of procellariids, and their associations with other predators such as marine mammals, are likely to be of critical importance in structuring the ecosystems in the Southern Ocean, South Atlantic and South Pacific.”

The paper’s commencing passage follows:

“There is increasing recognition of the importance of “positive interactions” among species in structuring communities. For seabirds, an important kind of positive interaction is the use of birds of the same species, birds of other species, and other marine predators such as cetaceans, seals and fishes as cues to the presence of prey. The process by which a single bird uses, say, a feeding flock of birds as a cue to the presence of prey is called “local enhancement” or “facilitation.” There are subtly different uses of each of these terms, but the issue we address here is the ubiquity of positive interactions between seabirds and other marine predators when foraging at sea, and whether as a result of their associations the feeding success, and therefore presumably the fitness, of individual seabirds is increased. If this contention is true, then it implies that conservation of any one species of seabird must take into consideration the status and possible conservation of those species that the focal species uses as a cue while foraging. For example, conservation of great shearwaters (Ardenna gravis), which often feed over tuna (e.g., Thunnus) schools, should take in to consideration conservation of tuna. Ecosystem management depends on understanding the importance of such processes; the loss of biodiversity, and the consequent threat to foraging success, may be a substantial threat to the stability of marine ecosystems.”

Black-browed Albatrosses are known to follow Killer Whales in the Southern Ocean (click here)

 Reference:

Veit, R.R. & Harrison, N.M. 2017. Positive interactions among foraging seabirds, marine mammals and fishes and implications for their conservation. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 06 October 2017.  doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2017.00121.

Note: the review omitted the following paper:

Enticott, J.W. 1986. Associations between seabirds and cetaceans in the African sector of the Southern Ocean. South African Journal of Antarctic Research 16: 25-28.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 29 November 2017

Zuzana Zajková (Dept. Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain) and colleagues have published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series on at-sea movements of Boyd’s Shearwater Puffinus boydi.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Despite the proliferation of seabird tracking studies, there is a relative paucity of studies on small tropical seabirds. We present for the first time the distribution and movements of the little-known Boyd’s shearwater Puffinus boydi, a Procellariiform endemic to the Cape Verde Islands. We tracked 28 birds from 2 breeding sites (Ilhéu Raso and Ilhéu de Cima) with geolocator loggers from 2007 to 2012. We also analysed stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the 1st primary (P1), the 6th rectrice (R6) and the 1st (S1) and 8th (S8) secondary feathers to reveal moulting pattern and oceanic isotopic gradients. Birds migrated on average 1452 km westward, to the central Atlantic Ocean (5 to 15°N, 30 to 40°W), where they stayed on average 114 d, from May to August. Boyd’s shearwaters exploited oceanic waters year-round and showed δ¹³C values similar to other oceanic seabird species and δ¹⁵N values indicating the lowest known trophic level among all central Atlantic seabirds. Isotope values in flight feathers suggest most animals moult their P1 and R6 around the breeding ground, whereas all birds moult S1 and S8 at the non-breeding quarters. Correlations of δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values from S8 with the longitude of the non-breeding area indicate the existence of large-scale isotopic gradients matching those known at baseline levels. Combining geolocator tracking and stable isotope analyses in feathers not only allowed us to describe in detail the annual life cycle and distribution of the species, but also the oceanic isotopic gradients in the tropical Atlantic.”

Reference:

Zajková Z, Militão T. & González-Solís, J. 2017. Year-round movements of a small seabird and oceanic isotopic gradient in the tropical Atlantic.  Marine Ecology Progress Series 579: 169-183.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 28 November 2017