Dr Will Lockhart delivers his opening remarks to delegates of the Thirteenth Meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC13) confirming the UK's committment to the Agreement and encouraging Parties to work together towards its objectives

Dr Will Lockhart, Deputy Director, International Biodiversity and Wildlife, Department for environment, food and rural affairs welcomed delegates on Monday to ACAP’s Thirteenth Meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC13). The four-day meeting is being hosted for the first time by the United Kingdom in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.

Addressing delegates, Dr Lockhart welcomed Parties and Observers to the meeting and acknowledged the global conservation effort already underway, whilst recognising the challenges still facing ACAP to protect its listed albatross and petrels.

“A huge amount of valuable work is being undertaken across Parties to protect these special birds, “he said. “But many albatross and petrel populations are still as you know in deep crisis. And there is much more we can and should be doing to further support the conservation of these iconic species.”

He confirmed the United Kingdom’s commitment to the Agreement pointing to projects to eradicate rodents at breeding sites and the implementation of strong bycatch mitigation measures in fisheries. 

The meeting commences

Wider conservation efforts were also highlighted, such as the £3 billion the UK has earmarked for spending by 2025, “to protect nature internationally – through bilateral aid, contributions to multilateral aid programmes, or by helping generate new, sustainable and innovative forms of nature finance, including by working with businesses to ensure that they better price their dependencies on nature.”

He encouraged Parties to work together in the spirit of collaboration in order to realise and drive forward the Agreements’ objectives, noting the importance of engaging with the fishing industry.

“Our work can only be successful if we work together. In particular, we need to identify further actions that can be taken to strengthen collaboration with Regional Fisheries Management Organizations and CCAMLR, both of which are critical to the success of the Agreement, or to ensure that data collection can be improved so that the scale of bycatch and other pressures on ACAP species can be better understood and mitigated. We also need to drive our wider governments to make sure that they are living up to their commitments under the Agreement and doing our best to implement the best practices we develop in collaboration with each other. “

23 May 2023

A displaying ACAP-listed Tristan Albatross on Gough Island; photograph by Michelle Risi

‘From Agreement to Action: Build Back Biodiversity” is the theme for this year’s International Biodiversity Day, a sentiment that will be forefront in the minds of delegates of the Thirteenth Meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC13) who gather today in Edinburgh to commence the week-long round of talks.

In 2019, ACAP's Advisory Committee declared a conservation crisis for its listed albatrosses and petrels, with fisheries operations, particularly longline and trawler fishing, identified as the biggest threat facing these magnificent birds. Although albatrosses and petrels face other threats including introduced predators, diseases and plastic ingestion, thousands continue to die every year from entanglements in fishing gear, or swallowing baited hooks and drowning.

ACAP has developed a comprehensive range of Best Practice Advice guidelines and factsheets containing proven mitigation measures that can be implemented by ACAP Parties, non-Party Range States and, critically, Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) to reduce seabird bycatch. Uptake of these proven measures remains low, and engagement with stakeholders such as RFMOs is essential to improve population trends of ACAP species. 

The challenge facing the Advisory Committee this week may well be finding the route to move beyond agreement of the conservation crisis facing these birds to tangible action that will assist ACAP in its objective to achieve and maintain a favourable conservation status for its listed species.

22 May 2023

Black-vented Shearwater at sea, photograph by Madeleine Claire

Cecilia Soldatini (Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, Unidad La Paz, Mexico) and colleagues have published in the journal Science of The Total Environment on the diving behaviour of the Near Threatened Black-vented Shearwater Puffinus opisthomelas utilizing GPS and accelerometers.

The publication's graphical abstract

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Oceanic mesoscale systems are characterized by inherent variability. Climatic change adds entropy to this system, making it a highly variable environment in which marine species live. Being at the higher levels of the food chain, predators maximize their performance through plastic foraging strategies. Individual variability within a population and the possible repeatability across time and space may provide stability in a population facing environmental changes. Therefore, variability and repeatability of behaviors, particularly diving behavior, could play an important role in understanding the adaptation pathway of a species. This study focuses on characterizing the frequency and timing of different dives (termed simple and complex) and how these are influenced by individual and environmental characteristics (sea surface temperature, chlorophyll a concentration, bathymetry, salinity, and Ekman transport). This study is based on GPS and accelerometer-recorded information from a breeding group of 59 Black-vented Shearwater and examine consistency in diving behavior at both individual and sex levels across four different breeding seasons. The species was found to be the best performing free diver in the Puffinus genus with a maximum dive duration of 88 s. Among the environmental variables assessed, a relationship was found with active upwelling conditions enhancing low energetic cost diving, on the contrary, reduced upwelling and warmer superficial waters induce more energetically demanding diving affecting diving performance and ultimately body conditions. The body conditions of Black-vented Shearwaters in 2016 were worse than in subsequent years, in 2016, deepest and longest complex dives were recorded, while simple dives were longer in 2017–2019. Nevertheless, the species' plasticity allows at least part of the population to breed and feed during warmer events. While carry-over effects have already been reported, the effect of more frequent warm events is still unknown.”

Reference:

Soldatini, C., Rosas Hernandez, M.P., Albores-Barajas, Y.V., Catoni, C., Ramos, A., Dell'Omo. G., Rattenborg, N. & Chimienti, M. 2023. Individual variability in diving behavior of the Black-vented Shearwater in an ever-changing habitat. Science of The Total Environment 883.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163286.

19 May 2023

A Black-browed Albatross flies over a stormy sea, by Rodrigo Tapia Jimenez, winner of the World Albatross Day 2020 photography competition “Albatrosses, their World and Threats' (click here)

Juan Gonzalez (Instituto de Biodiversidad Neotropical, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina) and colleagues have published in the journal Polar Biology on the fate of Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris in the face of climate change.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The Black-browed Albatross (BBA), Thalassarche melanophris, is one of the most abundant and widespread pelagic seabirds in the southern hemisphere, considered an indicator species of climate change in Antarctica. In addition to the known negative interactions with fisheries, other threats may act indirectly on this species whose effects have not yet been evaluated, such as increased sea surface temperature due to climate change. Under the assumption that carbon emissions modify the distribution of BBA, we modeled the environmental suitability and inferred BBA distribution under future climate scenarios for 2050 and 2100. We used 23 years of observation data (1991–2020) from research vessels in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean and Antarctica to estimate habitat suitability and predict change in suitability for the two future time ranges (2040–2050 and 2090–2100) under four representative concentration pathway scenarios: optimistic, intermediate pessimistic. Our projections predict a reduction in the total habitat suitability for BBA by 8% and 31.4% by 2050 and 2100, respectively, in the worst-case scenario compared to the present. Our study enhances understanding of the factors driving distribution dynamics for the species and aid in the development of conservation areas under future global change scenarios.”

With thanks to Javier Quiñones.

Reference:

Gonzalez, J.C., Orgeira, J.L., Jimenez, Y.G., Nieto, C., Romero, C., Alegre, A. & Quiñones, J. 2023. Habitat suitability under future climate scenarios in black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris) in Southern South America and Antarctica. Polar Biology doi.org/10.1007/s00300-023-03143-7.

18 May 2023