Eight years ago I posted an article to ACAP Latest News that commenced:

“In 2000 I visited Midway Atoll in the North Pacific on an excursion after the Second International Conference on the Biology and Conservation of Albatrosses and other Petrels that had been held in Honolulu, Hawaii in May that year.  While on the island I was appalled by the many corpses of Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis chicks strewn around with their body cavities crammed with plastic debris fed to them by their parents, including cigarette lighters, bottle tops, toothbrushes and even toy soldiers and action heroes.  This led to my co-authoring a paper on colour selection by North Pacific albatrosses, suggesting that they prefer red, pink and orange cigarette lighters to blue and green ones, presumably mistaking them for edible prey (click here).  It is clear that a decade later the problem has not gone away.”

This year I reprised my post to mark World Migratory Bird Day (click here).  Two decades after my Midway visit the problem continues as evocatively set out in the freely-distributed film ‘Albatross’ by Chris Jordan, and in his photographs above.

Quite probably most Midway visitors pick up a plastic item or two from one of the many albatross corpses that litter the island to take home to show friends or just to display in their office as a reminder.  My own souvenir (left below) was given to me by marine ornithologist Rosemary Gales when I challenged our post-conference party to find action figures.  Australian biologist and World Seabird Union Vice-Chair Nicholas Carlile was also with us on Midway and still carefully looks after his own GI Joe find (right below).  Some have used their plastic pieces to illustrate talks.  More ambitious have been the several mounted displays and artworks created from the gathered plastic lighters, toys and fragments.  ACAP Latest News has brought together a few examples of these on the last day of the decade in a reflective mood and in an endeavour to increase awareness of how plastic ingestion continues to affect albatrosses and petrels.

Betty Anne Schreiber, marine ornithologist and the World Seabird Union’s Treasurer, has an early Midway Laysan Albatross collection - carefully displayed - from the 1980s (below left).

Marine biologist Heidi Auman made her own plastic toy display (above right) from Laysan Albatross corpses on Midway Atoll a decade later from 1993 to 1995.  I first met her on the atoll in 2000 when I obtained my own action figure.  Influenced by the levels of pollution on the island she later wrote ‘Garbage Guts’ for children (see the ALN review).  Included with her collection is a syringe: seemingly Laysan Albatrosses are not fussy what they swallow, more’s the pity.

Jan van Franeker, senior scientist at Wageningen Marine Research in the Netherlands, who studies plastic pollution in North Atlantic seabirds, writes: “Images say more than words.  I pulled toothbrushes, tampon-holders, combs, lighters and lots of other stuff out of the ribcages of a few decayed corpses of Laysan Albatross chicks on Midway Atoll in 2000.  Whenever I give a presentation on the problems of marine plastic litter for tube-nosed seabirds, I carry this small collection [below] with me. It is one of the stories that needs to be told.”

Sheldon Plentovich, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Pacific Islands Coastal Program Coordinator has her own story: “In 2007 I worked on Kure Atoll for several months.  I camped there and one of the Laysan Albatross chicks living nearby thought I was interesting.  She would investigate all my belongings and come inside and make herself at home when I unzipped the door.  About a month before the bird was going to fledge, she started looking sick and eventually died.  This is a mural of the contents of her stomach.  There is a Hello Kitty doll in the middle.”

Jennifer Urmstom, MS student in Marine Science at the Hawai'i Pacific University, has used her plastic collection to depict a Laysan Albatross (below).

Hawaiian-based marine biologist, volunteer nurse, sailor, author, columnist (read her 14 December column on mooning next to albatrosses) and artist Sue Scott has created mosaics she calls “The Lighter Side of Albatrosses”.  She describes her work: “I found all the pieces in albatross colonies and on beaches.  The plastic survived wind, waves and tropical sun.  Barnacles attach to it, crabs float on it, bryozoans encrust it, sharks bite it, and seabirds swallow it, perhaps because flying fish lay eggs on it.  After all this, the colors stay vivid (I clean the pieces, but don't paint them) and the plastic holds its shape.  My albatross images represent the positive in seabird survival, beach clean-ups and recycling.  I don't sell my art.  It belongs to the albatrosses. They find the lighters.”  Her piece below made out of plastic cigarette lighters is entitled "Flotsam in Flight".

It seems that reduction at source is the only way the problem of albatrosses ingesting plastic items is going to be solved.  Not an easy task!

With thanks to Heidi Auman, Nicholas Carlile, Rosemary Gales, Sheldon Plentovich, Susan Scott, Betty Anne Schreiber, Jennifer Urmstom and Jan van Franeker.

Reference:

Cooper, J. Auman, H.J. & Klavitter, J. 2004.  Do the albatrosses of Midway Atoll select cigarette lighters by color?  Pacific Seabirds 31: 2-4.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 31 December 2019

Live Ocean is a marine conservation charitable trust with a mission to amplify and accelerate positive ocean action in New Zealand.  It aims to support and invest in promising marine science, innovation, technology and marine conservation projects.  The trust was founded by medal-winning Olympic, America’s Cup and Round-the-World sailors, Peter Burling and Blair Tuke in late 2019.  Peter and Blair are currently working towards participating in both the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the 36th America’s Cup.

Olympic sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke, photograph by Nick Reed

ACAP Latest News got in touch with the Chief Executive of Live Ocean, Sally Paterson, to learn more about the trust’s first project and what motivates its two founders.  Sally replies: “Live Ocean has chosen the Antipodean Albatross as the first focus of our marine conservation charity because this issue is so hard to see but it’s so important.  There are things we can do to help save this bird.  As a New Zealander, every time we lose a species that calls us home, we lose part of who we are.”

Peter Burling speaks to ALN of his commitment towards the trust’s first project: “When you’re in the Southern Ocean, working so hard, you look up and sometimes you’re lucky enough to see an albatross flying next to the boat.  They make it looks so easy, barely moving their enormous wings, they’re just so effortless.  The sailing community has got to come around this.  If we don’t, they’ll be gone in our children’s lifetime.”

Fellow trust founder Blair Tuke adds: “We have our blinkers on when it comes to the ocean, it’s much harder to see the issues than on land.  We're behind the race to save the Antipodean Albatross because we need to stand up and say it’s not OK to lose this species on our watch.”  Listen to their video clip describing the project here.

Live Ocean states on its website: “In the last 14 years, two thirds of the world’s breeding Antipodean Albatross have died, declining from about 17,000 breeding birds in 2004 to 6,000 in 2019. We’re losing two a day on average. That’s 800 breeding birds dying every year unnecessarily. The population is in freefall, and unless immediate action is taken we’ll lose this incredible New Zealand bird.”  The trust is raising funds to allow satellite tracking of Antipodean Albatrosses sea, as well as the adoption of “seabird smart” fishing practices.

Partnering with the Southern Seabird Solutions Trust (click here) Live Ocean’s first project addresses the high levels of at-sea mortality that are causing a drastic population decrease in the nominate subspecies of the Endangered Antipodean Albatross Diomedea antipodensis that breeds only on New Zealand’s Antipodes Island – but forages on the High Seas in the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea and into Chilean waters outside the breeding season.

Early financial contributions towards the costs of GPS trackers have come from the public, schools, New Zealand businesses such as Doyle Sails and from Yachting New Zealand.  Sally Paterson writes to ACAP Latest News “In total over NZ$50 000 has been raised for the satellite trackers so far but more is needed”.  The trackers will be placed on breeding Antipodean Albatrosses on Antipodes Island by New Zealand Department of Conservation researchers Graeme Elliott and Kath Walker from next month.  ACAP has identified the Antipodean Albatrosses breeding on Antipodes Island as a Priority Population for conservation management.

Live Ocean writes to ALN that it is looking forward to celebrating World Albatross Day in 2020 and using the day to highlight the continuing conservation crisis facing these iconic birds.  If a WAD2020 banner could be taken out to sea then perhaps an Antipodean Albatross wearing a satellite tracker could be persuaded to fly by and photo bomb?

  With thanks to Sally Paterson, Live Ocean.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 30 December 2019

Kees Roselaar and Hans van Brandwijk (Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands) have published in English in the Dutch Seabird Group's journal Sula on an early overlooked record of an ACAP-listed (and Critically Endangered) Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus from Heligoland, Germany.

The paper’s Dutch summary follows, edited from a translation by Google Translate:

“The Balearic Shearwater [Puffinus mauretanicus] is a rare species in Germany.  It was not recorded in the field until 1992; since then it has been regularly observed in small numbers. There were no museum specimens of this species [from Germany] until the second author discovered a Balearic Shearwater in the collection of the Zoological Museum Amsterdam (ZMA. AVES 44474).  It concerns a bird in worn juvenile plumage, collected at Helgoland on 5 December 1893.  The bird shows the usual characteristics for the species: brown upper parts, whitish belly with extensive brown on undertail coverts, side of neck, flanks and underwing coverts.  The specimen was probably obtained by fishermen at sea near Helgoland and sometime between late 1910 and the end of 1913 was donated to René baron Snouckaert of Schauburg by Hugo Weigold, staff member of de Vogelwarte Helgoland in 1910-1924.  Why would Weigold give away such a special copy?  The answer to that question is simple:  Weigold determined the bird as a Manx Shearwater [P. puffinus], then still quite a common species in German waters.  However, this incorrect determination cannot be blamed on him, because the Balearic Shearwater was only officially described by Lowe eight years later, in 1921.

Balearic Shearwater,  Heligoland, Germany, 5 December 1893; photograph by Hans van Brandwijk

Reference:

Roselaar, K. & van Brandwijk, H. 2019.  An old record of a Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus from Germany.  Sula 27. 3 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 29 December 2019

Alessandra Bielli (Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn, Cornwall, UK) and colleagues have published in the journal Biological Conservation on using light emitting diodes (LEDs) to reduce bycatch of marine vertebrates, including ACAP-listed Pink footed Shearwaters Ardenna creatopus (Vulnerable) and White-chinned Petrels Procellaria aequinoctialis (Vulnerable) that get caught in Peruvian gill nets.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Found in the coastal waters of all continents, gillnets are the largest component of small-scale fisheries for many countries.  Numerous studies show that these fisheries often have high bycatch rates of threatened marine species such as sea turtles, small cetaceans and seabirds, resulting in possible population declines of these non-target groups.  However, few solutions to reduce gillnet bycatch have been developed.  Recent bycatch reduction technologies (BRTs) use sensory cues to alert non-target species to the presence of fishing gear. In this study we deployed light emitting diodes (LEDs) - a visual cue - on the floatlines of paired gillnets (control vs illuminated net) during 864 fishing sets on small-scale vessels departing from three Peruvian ports between 2015 and 2018.  Bycatch probability per set for sea turtles, cetaceans and seabirds as well as catch per unit effort (CPUE) of target species were analysed for illuminated and control nets using a generalised linear mixed-effects model (GLMM).  For illuminated nets, bycatch probability per set was reduced by up to 74.4 % for sea turtles and 70.8 % for small cetaceans in comparison to non-illuminated, control nets. For seabirds, nominal BPUEs decreased by 84.0 % in the presence of LEDs.  Target species CPUE was not negatively affected by the presence of LEDs.  This study highlights the efficacy of net illumination as a multi-taxa BRT for small-scale gillnet fisheries in Peru.  These results are promising given the global ubiquity of small-scale net fisheries, the relatively low cost of LEDs and the current lack of alternate solutions to bycatch.”

Pink-footed Shearwater at sea, photograph from Oikonos

See also a popular report on the publication here.

With thanks to Joanna Alfaro and Jeffrey Mangel of ProDelphinus.

Reference:

Bielli, A., Alfaro-Shigueto, J., Doherty, P.D., Godley, B.J., Ortiz, C., Pasara, A., Wang, J.H., Mangel, J.C. 2019.  An illuminating idea to reduce bycatch in the Peruvian small-scale gillnet fishery.  Biological Conservation doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108277.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 28 December 2019