UPDATE:  The Pelagic Australis arrived at Gough Island on 10 March after a nine-day voyage from Cape Town and safely landed its members of the GIRP team ashore.

The Pelagic Australis about to leave Cape Town Harbour for Gough Island with the second GIRP team aboard, Chris Jones and Michelle Risi centre, Peter Ryan right; photograph by the RSPB

A second sailing of the Pelagic Australis that left Cape Town yesterday for Gough Island follows the first of last month with more team members of the United Kingdom’s Gough Island Restoration Programme (GIRP) aboard, following two weeks of quarantine to ensure their being COVID-19 free.  GIRP aims to eradicate the island’s House Mice that have taken to attacking and killing breeding albatrosses and petrels, including the Critically Endangered and near-endemic Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena.  Along with members of GIRP aboard the yacht is Peter Ryan, Director of the University of Cape Town’s FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.  Peter is an old Gough Island hand having first visited the island to conduct research on the impact of plastic ingestion on Great Shearwaters Ardenna gravis towards his MSc (along with ACAP’s Information Officer) way back in 1984.  With him on the yacht is his erstwhile postgraduate student Chris Jones, who graduated with an MSc in 2018 following a study of Gough’s prions Pachyptila spp. Also aboard is Michelle Risi, a member of ACAP’s World Albatross Day Group (and designer of the ‘WAD2021’ suite of posters of Critically Endangered albatrosses).  Michelle has already spent three tours of service on Gough working for GIRP monitoring the island’s seabirds – two of them consecutive years – along with husband, Chris Jones.

From left: Vonica Perold, Roelf Daling, Kim Stevens, Michelle Risi, Alexis Osborne and Chris Jones on Gough Island in 2020

When they arrive on the island they will meet up with GIRP member Alexis Osborne, who sailed last month with the first team.  Alexis is another of Peter’s past MSc students, having graduated in 2020 for a study of moult in allbatrosses and giant petrels that included information collected on Gough.  And already on the island since last year are two more of Peter’s students, Vonica Perold and Kim Stevens, both working towards their PhDs.  With no less than five marine ornithologists linked to the ‘Fitztitute’ together on the island later this month ACAP Latest News is sensing a photo opportunity!

Kim Stevens (left) and Von Perold weigh Subantarctic Fur Seal Arctocephalus tropicalis pups on Gough Island, photograph by Roelf Daling

A blast from the past: a young (and exuberant) Peter Ryan (left) with colleagues on Gough Island in 1984.  ACAP’s Information Officer is on the right; in between them are Barry Watkins, Stevi Broni and the late Jim Enticott

With thanks to Michelle Risi, Peter Ryan and Antje Steinfurth.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 March 2021, updated 11 March 2021

Black-browed Albatrosses accumulate behind a fishing vessel in the South Atlantic

Can Zhou (Texas A&M University, College Station, USA) and Nigel Brothers have published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science on assessing seabird bycatch by observing pre-capture interactions from pelagic longline fishing vessels.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Fishery bycatch poses a serious threat to seabird populations globally. Traditional haul-only post-capture observations are inadequate and inefficient to document seabird bycatch due to the substantial bycatch loss known to occur. Pre-capture observations offer an alternative by documenting seabird interactions leading up to captures. Based on the long-term large-scale dedicated field observations, this study revealed significant risk factors for the pre-capture stages of the seabird bycatch process in pelagic longline fisheries using Bayesian methods. Rough sea conditions were found to correlate with more seabirds following fishing vessels. Species identity, density effect, inter-species effect, and sea condition were found to significantly affect how frequently seabirds aggregated around a fishing vessel engage in bait-taking interactions. Intra-species competition was found to be the dominant type of density effect. Moreover, a web of inter-species interactions was identified to facilitate the bait-taking of superior competitors at the expense of inferior ones. The findings of this study are relevant to fishery managers in updating current data collection protocols to alleviate data issues caused by bycatch loss, to conservation biologists in quantifying bycatch risks for susceptible seabird populations, and in aiding the design and evaluation of bycatch mitigation measures.”

With thanks to Nigel Brothers.

Reference:

Zhou, C. & Brothers, N. 2021.  Interaction frequency of seabirds with longline fisheries: risk factors and implications for management.  ICES Journal of Marine Science doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsab014.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 11 March 2021

Felipe, the Waved Albatross

A Critically Endangered Waved Albatross Phoebastria irrorata found by a villager within the Pantanos de Villa Wildlife Refuge in the district of Chorrillos on the coast of Peru near Lima on the 14th of last month was collected and taken into care in the Parque de las Leyendas (Legends Park Zoo) in Lima.  The bird, given the name “Felipe”, was X-rayed for injuries and checked for disease by veterinarians from the Escuela de Medicina Veterinaria (School of Veterinary Medicine), Universidad Ricardo Palma and found to be in good health after two weeks in captivity.   Following being banded by the environmental NGO Pro Delphinus the bird was transported by staff from the Servicio Nacional de Areas Protegidas por el Estado (Peruvian Service for Natural Protected Areas; SERNANP) and Servicio Nacional Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre (National Forest and Wildlife Service; SERFOR) to the coastal town of Ancon a few tens of kilometres north of Lima.  Felipe was then taken out to sea and released on 3 March, as depicted by video.

Read of an earlier rehabilitated Waved Albatross from the same region of Peru.

Felipe gets weighed

The Waved Albatross, along with the equally Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena, has been chosen as a “feature species” to support this year’s World Albatross Day on 19 June, with its theme of “Ensuring Albatross-friendly fisheries”.  Specially prepared posters and an infographic featuring both albatrosses are available for viewing and downloading on this website.  Versions have been produced in both English and Spanish.  Click here to view the ACAP Species Summary for the Waved Albatross.

Photographs of Felipe and information from Facebook pages linked in text.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 March 2021

A Black-browed Albatross pair on New Island, South Atlantic; photograph by Ian Strange

Francesco Ventura (Departamento de Biologia Animal, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal) and colleagues have published in the journal Polar Biology on chick mortality events in the Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris on New Island in the South Atlantic.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“In the context of environmental change, determining the causes underpinning unusual mortality events of vertebrate species is a crucial conservation goal. This is particularly true for polar and sub-polar colonial seabirds, often immunologically naïve to new and emerging diseases. Here, we investigate the patterns of black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris) chick mortality events unrelated to predation recorded between the 2004/05 and 2019/2020 breeding seasons in four colonies across the species range in the Falklands. The prevalence of these mortality events was highly variable across years, causing the death of between 3 and 40% of all chicks in the studied plots. With few exceptions, mortality was patchily distributed. Using clustering methodologies, we identified the spatio-temporal mortality clusters based on the nest locations and chick death date. Using generalised linear models and generalised additive mixed-effects models we found that chicks nearer the first mortality event were predicted to die before those in more distant nests. The probability of death increased with age and was highest for chicks close to nests where a chick had died previously. Our findings, along with the symptoms consistently exhibited by most deceased chicks in the study, strongly suggest the prevalence of a widespread infectious disease, potentially with a common aetiology, both in areas with regular and with very rare human presence. Understanding the causes driving these disease-related mortality events, which seem different from the outbreaks documented in the literature, is a conservation priority for the Falklands black-browed albatross population, which comprises over 70% of the species global population.”

With thanks to Janine Dunlop, Niven Librarian, FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town

Reference:

Ventura, F., Granadeiro, J.P., Matias, R. & Catry, P. 2021.  Spatial and temporal aggregation of albatross chick mortality events in the Falklands suggests a role for an unidentified infectious disease.  Polar Biology 44: 351-360.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Office 09 March 2021