The British Ornithologists' Union 2015 Annual Conference with the theme “Birds in time and space: avian tracking and remote sensing” will be held over 31 March to 2 April at the University of Leicester in the UK.

“This conference will highlight the role of telemetry in understanding the ecology and behaviour of free-living wild birds.  Continuing advances in instrumentation and miniaturization are rapidly making remote-sensing of movements, activity and physiology available and cost-effective for all but the smallest species. This conference will showcase and consolidate the most recent research arising from these advances, emphasizing the value of telemetry for both testing theory and aiding conservation and management.  The advantages of integrated and multifaceted approaches will be a key feature of the conference, as will new developments and opportunities in this rapidly-advancing field.”

Rory Wilson (Department of Biosciences, Swansea University) will give the plenary address on “Smart technology on smarter birds: animal-attached systems for difficult questions”.

Among the oral presentations to be made six will report on tracking studies conducted on procellariiform seabirds, including on several species of ACAP-listed albatrosses (click here for the abstracts).  In addition as well as conventional posters, “talking posters” - short, automated, narrated and unmanned PowerPoint presentations - will run on a continuous loop during breaks in a dedicated screening room.

Grey-headed Albatross, photograph by Richard Phillips 

Thee six oral papers follow along with their presenting authors.

Thomas Clay:  Using habitat-preference models to predict the global non-breeding distributions of albatrosses (Grey-headed Albatross Thalassarche chrysostoma)

José Manuel de Los Reyes González:  Annual consistency of foraging grounds depends on spatial scale and population/individual level: the case of Cory’s Shearwater in the Canary Current upwelling (Calonectris sp.)

Maria Dias:  Using seabird tracking data to identify marine protected areas: does inter-annual variation justify multiple year tracking? (Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophrys [sic] and Cory’s Shearwater Calonectris borealis)

James Grecian:  Linking remote sensing and geolocation data to understand the impact of climatic change on seabird migration (Broad-billed Prion Pachyptila vittata)

Tim Guildford:  10 years tracking Man [sic] Shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus)

Richard Phillips:  Incidence and implications of individual variation in movement and at-sea activity patterns of seabirds (albatrosses)

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 06 March 2015

The Eleventh Meeting of the Ecologically Related Species Working Group (ERSWG) of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) is being held this week in Tokyo, Japan.

The meeting’s provisional agenda states that the Secretariat will request the Albatross and Petrel Agreement and BirdLife International to provide updated information on the seabirds likely to be caught by Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) fisheries, including population status summaries and reviews of mitigations measures.  It is also expected that participants will report on recent mitigation research aimed at assessing the effectiveness of mitigation measures, and provide updates on current and planned mitigation research.

A report from the Effectiveness of Seabird Mitigation Measures Technical Group (SMMTG), on “Approaches for Measuring and Monitoring the Effectiveness of Seabird Conservation Measures in SBT Longline Fisheries” will be considered at the meeting.

The agenda states that the “ERSWG should consider any relevant measures for seabirds that would be applicable to vessels fishing for SBT.  This agenda item is also to consider conservation and management measures for recommending to the Extended Commission.  ERSWG 9 recognised that all three of the best practice mitigation measures should be applied in high risk areas, but the ERSWG has not identified high risk areas that require this level of mitigation.”

Click here for the report of the 10th Meeting of CCSBT's Ecologically Related Species Working Group, held in Canberra, Australia in August 2013. 

ACAP is being represented at the 11th ERSWG meeting by its Executive Secretary, Warren Papworth.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 05 March 2015

The Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena remains under serious threat from attacks on its chicks by House Mice Mus musculus on the United Kingdom’s Gough Island in the South Atlantic.  Last year was the poorest breeding year since recording commenced in 2000, with less than 10% of occupied nests resulting in fledged chicks (click here).  Great albatrosses of the genus Diomedea are expected to raise chicks to fledging from 60-70% of breeding attempts, based on studies on islands where their chicks are not attacked by rodents, so conservationists are rightly concerned for the long-term future of Gough’s near-endemic albatross.

This year's January-February count of incubating birds is now complete with researchers on the island reporting to ACAP Latest News that 1886 pairs were counted for the biennially-breeding species.  This figure has not as yet been adjusted to take account of the estimated numbers of nests that may have failed before the island-wide count was completed.  Gough’s often poor weather with mists causing low visibility means that the island-wide survey has to take advantage of “weather windows” to get into the mountainous interior where the albatrosses breed; thus the counts often have to be spread over several weeks.

A female Tristan Albatross incubates its egg on Gough Island

Come September-October this year the number of surviving chicks will be counted to see how many have survived the winter onslaught by the predatory mice.

Click here for earlier incubation counts of Gough’s Tristan Albatrosses.

With thanks to Christopher Jones and Michelle Risi of the University of Cape Town’s FitzPatrick Institute for information.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 05 March 2015

The Fifth Session of the Meeting of the Parties (MoP5) to the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) will be held at the Iberostar Grand Hotel Mencey in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain from 4 – 8 May 2015.

The agenda and schedule for the five-day meeting are now available on this website.  A total of 29 documents to be tabled and discussed in Tenerife are listed, now available for reading in advance of the meeting (click here).

Matters for discussion include the nomination of Chile’s endemic Pink-footed Shearwater Puffinus creatopus for listing as ACAP’s 31st species and second shearwater, criteria for listing and de-listing species on Annex 1, lethal experimentation and identifying prospective new Parties to the Agreement.  The Fifth Session will also hear and consider a report of ACAP’s Advisory Committee, which held its Eight Meeting in Uruguay in September last year (click here).

Pink-footed Shearwater, photograph by Peter Hodum

The ACAP Secretariat will be represented at MoP5 by its Executive Secretary, Warren Papworth, Science Officer Wiesława Misiak and its honorary Information Officer, John Cooper, with support from Juan Pablo Seco Pon of Argentina.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 March 2015