Members of the Seabird Bycatch Working Group and Observers seated for the commencement of the meeting.. From left to right sitting at the far facing table: SBWG Vice-convenor, Dimas Gianuca; Seabird Bycatch Working Group Convenor, Igor Debski and SBWG Vice-convenors, Sebastián Jiménez and Juan Pablo Seco Pon.

ACAP’s round of meetings has commenced in Edinburgh with the Seabird Bycatch Data Workshop kicking off proceedings on Sunday 14 May. The aim of the workshop was to understand and find solutions to the challenges experienced in the reporting of ACAP seabird bycatch indicators. Further details on the workshop including the Rationale and Scope can be found in the workshop preparatory document. Conclusions from the workshop will be reported on during the three-day Eleventh Meeting of the Seabird Bycatch Working Group (SBWG11) taking place 15 - 17 May. 

Documentation for each of the meetings taking place over the next two weeks are accessible at the ACAP website:
• The Eleventh Meeting of the Seabird Bycatch Working Group (SBWG11)
• The Joint Eleventh Meeting of the Seabird Bycatch Working Group and Seventh Meeting of the Population and Conservation Status Working Group (Joint SBWG11/PaCSWG7)
• The Seventh Meeting of the Population and Conservation Status Working Group (PaCSWG7)
• The Thirteenth Meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC13)

 16 May 2023

A Southern Royal Albatross sits in the grass; photo by Aleks Terauds

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation have released report, POP2022-11 Campbell Island seabird research 2023, by Claudia Mischler and Chrissy Wickes on research undertaken on Campbell Island involving Southern Royal Albatrosses. 

The report’s summary follows, 

This project (POP2022-11) was initially scoped as a desk-based project to identify cost-efficient monitoring methodologies for Campbell Island. However, when Operation Endurance (a collaboration between DOC and the Navy facilitating access to Campbell Island) was announced to take place in February 2023, POP2022-11 was re-scoped to implement actual monitoring, rather than identifying future monitoring avenues.  

The February 2023 Operation Endurance trip to Campbell Island built on work from the March 2020 Operation Endurance trip, focusing on southern royal albatross (Diomedea epomophora). The main aims were counting of nests of southern royal albatross in the Col study area (and Moubray study area, if time permitted) to gain insight into population trends, deploying 29 GLS devices to gather long-term information on offshore distribution, collecting resight data (bands and PIT tags) for future demographic studies, and installing remote cameras at nests to study breeding biology, phenology, and success. Additional aims included counting of Antipodean albatross (Diomedea antipodensis) nests and conducting genomic sampling as well as deploying remote cameras on grey-headed albatross (Thalassarche chrysostoma) nests, if time permitted.

The trip to Campbell Island lasted one day, and hence it was only possible to deploy the 29 GLS tags and set up all 12 available remote cameras on southern royal albatross nests. No systematic search and count of the Col study area was possible, and there was insufficient time for Antipodean and grey-headed albatross work. Four banded southern royal albatrosses were resighted in the Col study area. Anecdotal evidence based on the limited nests sighted during this trip aligns with sightings during the 2020 trip and continues to suggest a concerning decline of the southern royal albatross at its stronghold. This is particularly alarming because even though southern royal albatross breed biennially, both cohorts (and hence the overall population) appear to be declining at the same rate because the 2020 survey covered one cohort and the 2023 survey the other.

An in-depth and up-to-date population study of southern royal albatross, including a thorough (preferably island-wide) nest count, is still needed to further assess the status of the southern royal albatross population and its trends.

Reference:

Mischler, C. & Wickes, C. 2023. Campbell Island/Motu Ihupuku Seabird Research & Operation Endurance February 2023. POP2022-11 final report prepared for Conservation Services Programme, Department of Conservation (New Zealand). 15 pp. 

15 May 2023

 Javier Quiñones with a Black Petrel chick on New Zealand's Great Barrier Island. Javier joined NZDOC's Elizabeth Bell and her team on their project on the at-sea distribution of Black Petrels; photo courtesy of Javier and NZDOC

"Working on the Black Petrel (Procellaria parkinsoni) project on Great Barrier Island, with Elizabeth Bell and her team was a wonderful experience. I am deeply grateful to the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) and to the New Zealand Department of Conservation for this extraordinary experience." ACAP Secondee Javier Quiñones

Successful ACAP Secondment applicant, Peruvian Javier Quiñones, has commenced his Secondment with the New Zealand Department of Conservation (NZDOC). ACAP Secondments support research aligned to the Agreement’s objective to conserve listed albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters and are also required to build capacity within Parties, be international in nature, and achieve tasks within the current work programmes of the Advisory Committee (see Annex 4, MoP7 Report) and Secretariat (see Annex 2, MoP7 Report).

Javier’s Secondment focuses on addressing distribution data gaps of Chatham, Buller’s and Salvin’s Albatrosses and Black Petrels and their overlap with the artisanal fishing effort of Peruvian longline, drift gillnet and coastal gillnet fisheries. This approach allows for the identification of high risk areas, ultimately facilitating the targeted application of bycatch mitigation methods in Peru. For this end, Javier is learning about mitigation and fisheries outreach techniques in New Zealand to adapt and apply similar methodologies to the artisanal fisheries of Peru.

New Zealand’s Chatham, Salvin’s and Buller’s Albatrosses and Black Petrels are classified as some of the most endangered albatrosses and petrels by the IUCN, with accidental death from interactions with fisheries one of the most significant threats facing these four ACAP-listed species. The threat posed by New Zealand fisheries during their breeding period has been documented. However, data on non-breeding threats from fishing operations off the coast of Peru are limited. 

Whilst Javier is in New Zealand, key objectives of his Secondment will be achieved through his involvement in planned activities including: meeting with bycatch mitigation experts and researchers, meeting NZDOC staff coordinating outreach to fishers, and accompanying fisher liaison officers on port visits to small inshore vessels. Javier will also engage further on joint data analyses (covering both seabird distribution data and fishing effort data) and visit seabird research projects on the North Island.  

Johannes Fischer (NZDOC) stated: “I couldn’t be happier with what Javier has managed to achieve during his time here. Completing complex data wrangling exercises, banding Black Petrel chicks on the top of a mountain, and engaging with fishers on mitigation methods; he truly covered the full suite of puzzle pieces required for effective bycatch mitigation. We are very much looking forward to continuing our collaboration and reducing bycatch of our shared seabirds.”

Speaking about the experiences from his time in New Zealand and their planned application back in Peru, Javier said: “For me the project is fascinating because in the second phase, we will train the artisanal longline fishermen in southern Peru. We’ll interact with the fishing guilds to be able to apply and adapt these methodologies and minimize the bycatch of albatrosses and petrels in this Peruvian fishery, which fishing area is huge - from 80 to 400 nautical miles offshore.”

Javier, who is Head of the Top Predators Office at the Instituto del Mar del Peru (Peruvian Marine Research Institute), studied Biology at Ricardo Palma University before gaining his Master of Science in Marine Ecology Management at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, in Belgium. He then completed his PhD at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata in Argentina on jellyfish occurrence and its relationship environmental variability at inter annual and inter decadal scales in the Humboldt Current System. 

Javier in 2021 on board an artisinal longline vessel targeting sharks 150 nautical miles offshore Ilo (a port city in southern Peru). Javier is pictured (left) with a Buller's Albatross (Thalassarche bulleri), and (right) with a Chatham Albatross (Thalassarche eremita). Both species were tagged with GPS devices during the project "Integrating an onboard observer program and remote tracking data to evaluate the interactions between the small-scale longline fisheries and adult Chatham Albatrosses in their wintering grounds off Peru." which was assisted by funding from the ACAP Small Grants Programme.

After a decade of research on sea turtles and their population dynamics and foraging ecology, in 2017 he shifted his research to albatrosses and petrels, specifically their spatial distribution, seasonality, age-class distribution, foraging ecology and habitat use in Peru. 

Javier has actively participated in many research cruises on pelagic seabirds along the Peruvian coast and has been involved in eleven Antarctic surveys with Peru, Argentina and the U.S.A.  He has worked on surveys attaching GPS satellite transmitters on Chatham and Buller's Albatrosses in southern Peru and is currently collaborating with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation on the habitat use of Salvin’s Albatrosses and Black Petrels in Peru. 

Follow Javier’s Secondment at his Instagram account, @javichojelly and find his research here.

12 May 2023

Black-footed Albatross and chick, Midway Atoll, photograph by Wieteke Holthuijsen, poster design by Bree Forrer

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement is pleased to release its second set of 12 freely downloadable photo posters for this year’s World Albatross Day with its theme of “Plastic Pollution” in a second Asian language following Japanese – this time in Korean (available here).   Previously, the poster set has been made available in ACAP’s three official languages – English, French and Spanish, and in Portuguese. The ‘WAD2023’ logo is also available in Korean.

The Republic of Korea is not a Party to the Agreement, nor has a breeding population of an ACAP-listed species. However, it is an ACAP range state* by way of undertaking fishing that interacts with ACAP-listed species, notably through its high-seas longline fisheries for tuna in the Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans.

ACAP has made its Seabird Bycatch Mitigation Fact Sheets available in Korean. A Korean version of the ACAP Seabird Bycatch ID Guide is also planned.

It is hoped the photo posters can be used within Korea to increase awareness of the conservation plight being faced by albatrosses and petrels and aid the country in celebrating World Albatross Day come 19 June.

Adolescent Northern Royal Albatrosses display at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head; photograph by Sharyn Broni, poster design by Bree Forrer

With grateful thanks for help with translations from Vivian Fu and Yuna Kim Williams, and to photographers Sharyn Broni and Wieteke Holthuijsen.

* “Range State” means any State that exercises jurisdiction over any part of the range of albatrosses or petrels, or a State, flag vessels of which are engaged outside its national jurisdictional limits in taking, or which have the potential to take, albatrosses and petrels” [from the Agreement text].

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 11 May 2023