At-sea tracks of Wandering Albatross fledglings and adults on sabbatical from Bird Island.  Proximity of a bird to a vessel indicated by radar is shown by coloured dots

The Seabird Sentinels project, which aims to assess bycatch risk of globally Vulnerable Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans from South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur)* using bird-borne radar, is up and running for its second season.  Twenty satellite-linked GPS-radar tags produced by Sextant Technology (New Zealand) were deployed on Wandering Albatross chicks at Bird Island in mid-December last year.  The juveniles have now fledged but all are currently staying within the south-west Atlantic.  Another 15 tags have been deployed on adults on sabbatical, i.e. birds that have bred previously but are not breeding in the current season.

A Wandering Albatross chick on Bird Island, photograph from Richard Phillips

“The overall objective of this project is to link habitat preference, at-sea activity patterns and detections from novel bird-borne radars to quantify interactions of tracked wandering albatrosses with legal and IUU [Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated] and fishing vessels.  This will greatly improve previous coarse-scale analyses of overlap with fishing effort to clearly identify areas and periods of highest susceptibility to bycatch for different life-history classes (age, sex, breeding status).  This is an innovative project and has the potential to be a “game-changer” given the capacity for identifying IUU vessels from bird-borne radar, and the potential future extension of the approach to other species” (click here).

 The research project is being led by the British Antarctic Survey in partnership with BirdLife International and is funded by the Darwin PLUS scheme.  Find more information on the BirdLife International Marine Programme’s work to save seabirds and their habitats around the world here.

Read earlier posts in ACAP Latest News in using albatross-borne radar to track fishing vessels.

With thanks to Richard Phillips, British Antarctic Survey.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 27 January 2021

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.

The 2021 chick is revealed by George, photograph by Jon Brack, Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, January 2021

and watch the video clip

George and Geraldine make up the sole pair of Vulnerable Short-tailed Albatrosses Diomedea albatrus on Midway Atoll’s Sand Island.  They commenced breeding on the island in 2018 after first meeting up on the island in 2016 and have attempted breeding every year since.  Apart from a female-female pair on Kure Atoll they are currently the only breeding Short-tails on USA territory.  News is now in that they have hatched their latest egg:  "The short-tailed albatross pair … laid their egg on October 28 [2020].  Since then, biologists have had a trail camera trained on the nest, hoping to catch the first images of the chick hatching.  Biologists believe the egg hatched on January 1.”

To date, George and Geraldine have successfully fledged two chicks on Midway; good parents, so a third fledgling later this year may well be expected.  Read more on the history of the pair.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 January 2021

Location of observation points in 2019

The BirdLife partner, SPEA, has reported on the passage of nine seabird species, including the ACAP-listed and Critically Endangered Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus, observed from five mainland sites along the coast of Portugal in 2019.

The report’s summary follows:

“Seabirds are a relatively small group of birds but they have a global reach as they occur in every marine environment around the world.  Due to their global abundance they are vital to understanding the status and ecology of marine environments.  In recent decades, their status has been put under serious threat due to a wide range of anthropogenic factors.  To better understand the seabirds ecology the RAM (Seabird and Marine Monitoring Network) census is used by Iberian researchers to collect data on seabirds in coastal areas.

This report refers to data collected during 2019 for the RAM census of Portugal. Census were carried out at 5 observation points -Praia da Vagueira, Cabo Carvoeiro, Cabo Raso, Cabo de São Vicente and Ilha do Farol. An observational effort of 116 hours was made, with Ilha do Farol having the highest observational time (36 hours) and Praia da Vagueira the lowest one (15 hours).

Data was collected to show monthly and annual passage rates (birds/hour) and also to carry out a behavioural analysis on the 9 target species: Razorbill (Alca torda), Cory’s Shearwater (Calonectris borealis), Great Skua (Catharacta skua), Mediterranean Gull (Larus melanocephalus), Common Scoter (Melanitta nigra), Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus), European Shag (Gulosus aristotelis), Balearic Shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus) and Sandwich Tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis).  The observation point with the highest species diversity of seabirds was Praia da Vagueira (24 species), closely followed by Ilha do Farol (22 species).  The month with the highest passage rate was March (436.96 birds/hour) and the observation point was Cabo Raso with 382.09 birds/hour.”

Balearic Shearwater at sea, photograph by Pep Arcos

Reference:

Adlard, E. & Fagundes, A.I. 2020. Iberian Network for Seabirds and Marine Mammals - Portugal Mainland Counts during 2019.  Lisbon: Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves.  38 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 January 2020

Wandering Albatross by Shary Page Weckwerth, from a photograph by Linda Clokie

 Carola Rackete (Biosciences, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Polar Biology on demographic variations in globally Vulnerable Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans breeding in the South Atlantic.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The wandering albatross, Diomedea exulans, is a globally threatened species breeding at a number of sites within the Southern Ocean.  Across the South Georgia archipelago, there are differences in population trends even at closely located colonies.  Between 1999 and 2018 the largest colony, at Bird Island, declined at 3.01% per annum, while in the Bay of Isles, the decline was 1.44% per annum.  Using mean demographic rates from a 31-year study at Bird Island and an 11-year study of breeding success at Prion Island in the Bay of Isles in a VORTEX model, we show that differences in breeding success do not fully explain observed differences in population trends.  Other potential contributing factors are differential use of foraging areas, with possible knock-on effects on adult body condition, provisioning rate and breeding success, or on bycatch rates of adults or immatures.”

With thanks to Richard Phillips.

Reference:

Rackete, C., Poncet, S., Good, S.D., Phillips, R.A., Passmore, K. & Trathan, P. 2021.  Variation among colonies in breeding success and population trajectories of wandering albatrosses Diomedea exulans at South Georgia.  Polar Biology doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02780-6.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 January 2021