H18 off the Cape Peninsula, photograph by Trevor Hardaker

A colour-banded Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus was photographed approximately 32 nautical miles (59 km) offshore on a Zest for Birds ‘pelagic’ bird-watching day trip out of Hout Bay on South Africa’s Cape Peninsula on 14 November 2021.  The bird was seen among a flock of seabirds attending a demersal hake trawler.  It was originally banded (with metal SAFRING 9-A69410 on its right leg and plastic Yellow H18 on its left) as a breeding female (determined by culmen length) of unknown age on 07 October 2016 in a monitoring colony below Low Hump on Gough Island in the South Atlantic, the most northerly breeding locality for the species.

Track followed on 14 November 2021

The bird was recorded breeding again in the Low Hump colony in the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons (successfully) and again in the 2020/21 season (unsuccessfully), being last seen there in May 2021.  Her partner since at least 2018/19, Yellow G93, had been recorded on an empty nest in the colony on 16 September this year but it seems no breeding took place.  So it appears H18 is on “sabbatical” for the current 2021/22 season as female Southern Giant Petrels are unlikely to travel that far away from home when breeding – although they have been seen around Tristan da Cunha 413 km away from Gough just a few days after being recorded incubating on the island (click here).  Taking years off from breeding is quite common for the species; indeed, the bird may also have missed the 2017/18 breeding season.

The observation is of particular interest to ACAP’s Information Officer as he initiated the long-term monitoring study in the Low Hump colony in September 2010 with the support of a Captain Simpson Scholarship from the Royal Naval Birdwatching Society.   Good to know then that after a decade the study he set up colour- and metal-banding incubating birds and staking nests towards the end of his field-work years, with high hopes of it continuing, is being kept going by field researchers from the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

With thanks to Trevor Hardaker, Zest for Birds and Steffen Oppel, RSPB.

Reference:

Cooper, J. & Parker, G.C. 2011.  Observations of sexual dimorphism among the Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus of Gough Island.  Sea Swallow 60: 84-90.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 23 November 2021

Tracks of fledging Manx Shearwaters (details in supporting information)

Joe Wynn (Oxford Navigation Group, University of Oxford, UK) and colleagues have published in Ibis International Journal of Avian Science on the migration pattern of juvenile Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Although mechanisms of genetic and social inheritance have been implicated in determining the migratory routes of birds, it is unclear what their relative contributions are in species where outbound and return migration routes differ (‘loop migrants’). Here, we used biologging devices to follow Manx Shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus), a long-lived seabird with a trans-Atlantic loop migration, from before their first migration until their 3^rd calendar year. We found that shearwaters undertake first migration without their parents, setting off almost immediately upon fledging and moving along a more direct trajectory than adults, before wintering in same part of the South Atlantic as their parents and subsequently iteratively developing their return migration route over the next 3 years, each time returning—unlike their parents—via a Western Atlantic route. We propose that first outbound migration in Manx Shearwaters is broadly consistent with a genetically inherited vector, that both the outbound and return migration trajectories are unlikely to be learnt from experienced conspecifics, and that return migration in Manx Shearwaters (and perhaps loop migrants more generally) may be informed by genetically inherited information and/or local environmental conditions.”

Reference:

Wynn, J., Guilford, T., Padget, O., Perrins, C.M., Mckee, N., Gillies, N., Tyson, C., Dean, B., Kirk, H. & Fayet, A.L. 2021.  Early-life development of contrasting outbound and return migration routes in a long-lived seabird.  Ibis doi.org/10.1111/ibi.13030.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 November 2021

David Agnew (CCAMLR) and Christine Bogle (ACAP) sign the new Memorandum of Understanding

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement has renewed its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).  The new MoU was signed between the ACAP and CCAMLR Secretariats, represented respectively by Executive Secretaries Christine Bogle and David Agnew, on 9 November 2021.  The new MoU is the fourth since the original was signed in 2013 (click here).  The objective of the MoU with CCAMLR is to facilitate cooperation with a view to supporting efforts to minimise the incidental by-catch of albatrosses and petrels listed in Annex 1 of ACAP within the CAMLR Convention Area.

The newly-signed MoU closely resembles the previous MoU with CCAMLR, which expired in November 2021.  An important addition allows for CCAMLR to share routinely summarised seabird mortality data with the ACAP Secretariat in advance of annual CCAMLR Scientific Committee meetings.  The addition resulted from discussions at the recently concluded 40th Meeting of CCAMLR’s Scientific Committee (SC CAMLR-40) and the 40th Meeting of the Commission (CCAMLR-40).  At these meetings the ACAP Secretariat stated that to prepare effectively for its participation in the annual CCAMLR Scientific Committee meetings it would be helpful if the CCAMLR Secretariat were able to share in advance the summaries of seabird incidental mortality data presented to the Fish Stock Assessment Working Group, and to the Incidental Mortality in Associated Fisheries Working Group, the latter having been re-established at this year’s meetings.

The re-established WG-IMAF is to be co-convened by Nathan Walker of New Zealand and Marco Favero from Argentina.  Both Nathan and Marco are well known to the ACAP community, being respectively the previous Chair of the ACAP Scientific Committee and previous Executive Secretary.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 19 November 2021

 
Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross artwork for ACAP by Lynne Waters, Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN)

Florian Orgeret (Marine Apex Predator Research Unit, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa) and colleagues have published open view in the journal Ecology Letters on aspects of climate change impacting seabirds.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Understanding climate change impacts on top predators is fundamental to marine biodiversity conservation, due to their increasingly threatened populations and their importance in marine ecosystems. We conducted a systematic review of the effects of climate change (prolonged, directional change) and climate variability on seabirds and marine mammals. We extracted data from 484 studies (4808 published studies were reviewed), comprising 2215 observations on demography, phenology, distribution, diet, behaviour, body condition and physiology. The likelihood of concluding that climate change had an impact increased with study duration. However, the temporal thresholds for the effects of climate change to be discernibly varied from 10 to 29 years depending on the species, the biological response and the oceanic study region. Species with narrow thermal ranges and relatively long generation times were more often reported to be affected by climate change. This provides an important framework for future assessments, with guidance on response- and region-specific temporal dimensions that need to be considered when reporting effects of climate change. Finally, we found that tropical regions and non-breeding life stages were poorly covered in the literature, a concern that should be addressed to enable a better understanding of the vulnerability of marine predators to climate change.”

Reference:

Orgeret, F., Thiebault, A.,  Kovacs, K.M., Lydersen, C., Hindell, M.A., Thompson, S.A., Sydeman, W.J. & Pistorius, P.A. 2021.  Climate change impacts on seabirds and marine mammals: the importance of study duration, thermal tolerance and generation time.  Ecology Letters doi.org10.1111/ele.13920.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 18 November 2021