Pink-footed Shearwater, watercolour by Lea Finke, from a photograph by Peter Hodum

The Tenth Meeting of ACAP’s Seabird Bycatch Working Group (SBG10) will be held as a virtual meeting from 17 to 19 August 2021 (AEST/UTC+10).  Likewise, the Sixth Meeting of the Population and Conservation Status Working Group (PaCSWG6) will be held virtually from 24 -25 August 2021 (AEST/UTC+10).  Most Documents and Information Papers are now available on this website for both meetings.  Please note some of the documents are protected by passwords; summaries of their contents are, however, available for reading.

Documents for the virtual Twelfth Meeting of the ACAP Advisory Committee (AC12) will be posted to this website in the three ACAP official languages of English, French and Spanish  before the end of this month. The meeting will be held from 30/31 August to 1/2 September 2021.

See AC12 Circular 5 for more details of this year’s virtual meetings, including meeting times.

ACAP Secretariat. 20 July 2021

Antipodean Albatross pair on Antipodes Island, photograph by Erica Sommer

Yvan Richards (Dragonfly Data Science) has produced a report for the Conservation Services Programme of the Department of Conservation on population modeling of the nominate subspecies of the New Zealand endemic Antipodean Albatross Diomedea antipodensis (globally Endangered) that breeds on Antipodes Island.  Annual survival rate and breeding success both decreased over the period 1984 to 2004.

The report’s summary follows:

Antipodean albatross Diomedea antipodensis antipodensis are endemic to New Zealand, with the quasi-totality of the population nesting on Antipodes Island. The species is classified as Nationally Critical due to a potential demographic decline. Threats to the population include incidental mortality in fisheries (in New Zealand and in international waters) and climate change.

The objective of this project was to provide a tool that allows stakeholders to explore the potential impact of threats and the demographic outcomes of management strategies. Using the tool, simulations of the demographic impact of different scenarios may be carried out so that management strategies can be assessed and prioritised.

A small subset of the population of Antipodean albatross has been studied since 1994, and these field data were used to perform the simulations. A Bayesian integrated population model was developed to estimate the main demographic parameters of the population. The model considered detectability of individuals, inter-annual variability, and movements in and out of the study area; it was fitted using the software Stan.

From the model, the annual survival rate for females was estimated to decline from 0.947 (95% c.i.: 0.914 – 0.974) in the period from 1994 to 2004, to 0.882 (95% c.i.: 0.814 – 0.94) after 2005. Estimated survival for males was higher, at 0.946 (95% c.i.: 0.913 – 0.972) and 0.927 (95% c.i.: 0.887 – 0.961) for the two periods. Breeding success also declined between the two periods, from 72.4% (95% c.i.: 65.8% – 78.6%) from 1994 to 2004 to 63.7% (95% c.i.: 53.4% – 73%) subsequently.

Under the current scenario, simulations suggest a significant decline of the population, with an annual growth rate of -4.84% (95% c.i.: -6.07% – -3.65%). Limitations in the data and in the model assumptions may cause the decline to be slightly overestimated; however, the trend remains of concerns.

The simulation tool is aimed to assist conservation managers with the prioritisation of management strategies to mitigate threats to the Antipodean albatross population and to guarantee the persistence of this species.:”

Reference:

Richard, Y. 2021.  Integrated Population Model of Antipodean Albatross for simulating Management Scenarios. Technical Report prepared for Department of Conservation – June 2021. Wellington: Dragonfly Data Science.  31 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 19 July 2021

Hands-on management: a Northern Royal Albatross chick gets weighed at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head; Department of Conservation webcam photograph

The Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi colony on New Zealand’s mainland at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head is intensively managed in a number of ways aimed at increasing breeding success.  One method regularly used is the supplementary feeding of chicks deemed to be underweight for their age that has been used successfully for decades at the colony; over the last three seasons more than 275 supplementary feeds have been carried out without incident. So far this season, 15 chicks have received a total of 77 supplementary feeds.

The Department of Conservation has now reported that an underweight 146-day-old male chick died after a routine supplementary feeding this month.  “The rangers noticed the chick had laboured breathing after the feed.  The bird’s condition deteriorated very quickly and unfortunately it died.”  The chick was sent to Massey University for a necropsy to determine the exact cause of death, where a sizeable piece of rocky material resembling charcoal was found in the chick’s trachea, causing asphyxiation.

“It is not known how the chick first ingested the rock, but it is thought the parent may have picked it up while fishing (as charcoal floats) and fed it to the chick, which then regurgitated the material while being supplementarily fed and inhaled it.  Chicks can become underweight for several reasons. Their parents may be inexperienced foragers or new to feeding a chick, there may be poor food resources at sea, or the chick may have lost a parent so is only getting food from one parent. It may also be caused by an underlying health condition.  The colony at Pukekura is intensively managed to give the chicks the best chance of survival.  Issues that rangers help to mitigate include extreme temperatures, fly strike on hatching chicks, predators, and underweight chicks.”

There are now 32 chicks remaining out of the 36 that hatched this season from 41 eggs laid late last year (a hatching success of 87.8%) at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head, a record number since the first chick fledged in 1938.

Read the original news post here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 16 July 2021

Tracking the Yelkouan Shearwater from Croatia

Seabirds in the Mediterranean are increasingly threatened by climate change, depletion of sea food resources, and other human related impacts (by-catch capture, artificial light pollution, habitat destruction).  A pilot study aims to understand the migratory movements of a species endemic to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, the globally Vulnerable Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan - a species that has been identified as a candidate for ACAP listing.  Previous work has indicated that some of the birds remain in the Mediterranean Basin while others travel to the Black Sea.  GPS-GSM transmitters were deployed on 15 Yelkouan Shearwaters (11 adults and four juveniles) on 29 June, just before they leave their colony from Zaklopatica in the Lastovo Archipelago, Croatia by Sven Kapelj and his team from Udruga BIOM.  These transmitters allow detailed live tracking without the need for recapture and fall naturally from the birds after a few weeks of tracking (click here).

The study is being coordinated by the Mediterranean Science Commission (CIESM) with co-funding from the Prince Albert II Foundation of Monaco for a four-year period (2020-2024) as part of the new programme Highly Migratory Species entitled "Tracking Highly Migratory Species in the Mediterranean & adjacent Seas".

Follow the blog of the study and also live tracking of the birds’ at-sea movements.

An edited example for 14 July follows:

“A7 has now arrived in the Black Sea, after having crossed the Dardanelles, the Marmara Sea and now the Bosphorus in the last 24 hours hardly without stopping.  Its trajectory so far appears optimal: it took exactly one week to fly over 2000 km since leaving its nesting site in Croatian waters!  This is quite a feat, compared to two other shearwaters (A2, A5) which have paused (or ended their journey?) in the Aegean Sea, in the vicinity of known Greek colonies.”

With thanks to Loriane Mendez, The Mediterranean Science Commission, Monaco.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 15 July 2021, updated 16 July 2021