The Oceania Seabird Symposium will now be held in Auckland, New Zealand in April 2025

The University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand is now the venue for the Oceania Seabird Symposium in 2025.  Oceania Seabirds will bring the attention of the international and Oceania community to the importance of seabirds within the world’s largest body of water, the Pacific Ocean

The symposium  mission is to:

• Connect government policy makers, seabird conservation practitioners and scientists, land managers and communities from all Pacific Island countries and territories working with seabirds.
• To increase our collective understanding of the value of seabirds to Pacific economies and communities including cultural values.
• Highlight conservation and scientific initiatives currently underway or planned, to the benefit of region’s seabirds, their islands, and the seas where they occur and to the people of Oceania.
• Provide hands-on training and networking for increasing capacity for monitoring and managing Pacific seabird populations at community and national levels.

A Vulnerable Buller's Shearwater Ardenna bulleri off Mercury Islands, New Zealand, a target for a symposium field trip, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Six workshops are planned, to be led by international experts. Two field trips  are to be held on 17 April.  The call for abstracts is now open with a deadline of 28 February 2025.  Most unusually, there is no registration fee!

The symposium was originally planned to be held in New Caledonia in September this year (click here).

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 30 December 2024