Painting of the first Amsterdam Albatross photographed by the author, by Susan Roux

NOTE: This post continues an occasional series that features photographs of the 31 ACAP-listed species, along with information from and about their photographers.  Here, Jean-Paul Roux writes about the Endangered Amsterdam Albatross Diomedea amsterdamensis he first identified and described as a new species in the 1980s.  His account is illustrated with photographs taken by Jérémy Dechartre because Jean-Paul no longer has easy access to his own photos stored on another continent.  Jérémy  was the ornithologist and marine mammologist from the Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé (coordinated and supported by the Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor) with the 70th Mission to Amsterdam Island in 2019 with the project “Birds and Marine Mammals, Sentinels of Global Changes in the Southern Ocean”.

Jean-Paul Roux on Amsterdam Island in 1981 (with a friend)

Amsterdam Island is a small (less than 7 x 10 km) volcanic island situated in the centre of the southern Indian Ocean 4500 km from southern Africa, 3200 km from western Australia and 3200 km from Antarctica; making it one of the most isolated islands in the world.  Despite this remoteness it was discovered extremely early in the age of southern exploration, being sighted by the Spanish Elcano in March 1522 during the first circumnavigation of the world (the Magellan Expedition).  Subsequently the Dutch van Diemen named the island after his ship the Nieuw Amsterdam in 1633; the first recorded landing was made in 1696.  During the 18th and 19th centuries the island was frequently visited by sealers who nearly exterminated the local population of the Sub-Antarctic Fur Seal Arctocephalus tropicalis.  These were followed by regular visits of fishing vessels (particularly from the island of Réunion).  At least seven vessels have been wrecked along the island shore.

Amsterdam Island from the air, Photograph by Thierry Micol

These early visits had a devastating effect on the fauna and flora of the island through direct depredation by humans, introductions of predators (cats, rats and mice) as well as several large fires which destroyed the original forest of Phylica arborea which covered most of the slopes of the island.  A failed attempt at settlement in 1871 left behind more introduced animals (including cattle) and plants which contributed to the severe environmental degradation of the island and the extinction of several species of seabirds (some probably endemic) and the only known terrestrial bird (an endemic flightless duck).

The 1951 photograph of an Amsterdam Albatross; by R. Delon from Paulian (1953)

One of the early biologists of that era was Patrice Paulian who, at the end of a research mission on Kerguelen in 1951, had a short stop-over at Amsterdam during which he tried to document the avifauna of the island.  He heard from the station personnel of very few “great albatrosses” nesting on the high Plateau des Tourbières but failed to see them.  The following year he received a black and white photograph of a breeding adult on an egg taken by non-scientific personnel of the station on 6 April 1951 which he published in 1953, with the comment [in translation] “Diomedea exulans ssp? … in the absence of any material… we can only affirm the presence at Amsterdam Island of a brown sub-species clearly different from the birds of Kerguelen”.

Unfortunately, Paulian had only access to this photograph and mistook the dark cutting edge of the bill for a shadow caused by what he thought was possibly a partially open bill.  He later returned to Amsterdam Island for a summer and produced a seminal work on the Sub-Antarctic Fur Seal, but again never managed to see an adult great albatross (because their breeding season is later than for the Kerguelen birds he knew).  As a great naturalist that he proved to be, I am convinced that, if he had had the opportunity to see a breeding adult, he would have recognized the uniqueness of these birds.

An Amsterdam Albatross broods its downy chick

During the following two decades, no trained ornithologist had spent more than a couple of days on Amsterdam Island.  After my first sub-Antarctic experience at the Crozets (late 1979 to early 1981), I was given the opportunity to visit Amsterdam Island for a “summer mission” (September 1981-March 1982), focusing on fur seal biology and Indian Yellow-nosed Albatrosses Thalassarche carteri.  During this time, I also documented the avifauna and the ecologically degraded state of the island.  As regularly as possible I visited the site of the Amsterdam Albatross breeding area on the floor of the remnant of an ancient caldera at an altitude between 500 and 600 m.  During those early visits, guided by some island station personnel, we located eight chicks that we banded, but I did not manage to observe an attending adult.  My first impression was that the chicks seemed at least two months behind in terms of development compared with the Wandering Albatrosses D. exulans I had observed on the Crozet Islands in the previous two seasons. These birds fledged in late December and January.  Finally, in early 1982 I had my first sighting of an adult feeding a pre-fledgling chick. The differences in plumage and the bill colouration were immediately strikingly different from the southern great albatrosses I knew.  I intensified the frequency of my visits to this seldom-visited area of the island until I documented photographically a pair displaying with a half-built nest leading, a week later in early March, to a first incubating bird.  The inferred laying date was more than a month later than all the documented laying dates for the Wandering Albatross

A pair of Amsterdam Albatrosses interact

With these preliminary observations, my return to mainland France was met with mixed reactions.  Whereas some colleagues were supportive, others were less so.  After more than a year gathering more information, measurements and observations from previous and current personnel at Amsterdam Island, I had accumulated enough evidence to propose a new species for this extremely rare albatross, with a first estimate being as low as 50 birds!  However, this idea was not accepted at the Museum national d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris on the grounds that it was not possible to describe a new species without at least a specimen (holotype).  After many visits to natural history museums around the world holding albatross specimens collected over the last two centuries from the central Indian Ocean with the help of friends and colleagues we still had no physical specimen.   Someone made the suggestion that to make a species proposal I should “sacrifice” at least one breeding adult, but preferably two (a male and a female) when initial estimates pointed to a population of only 13 breeding pairs between 1978 and 1983.

A feathering Amsterdam Albatross chick stretches its wings

In March 1982 an adult was found dead on the plateau where the birds were breeding.  Due to the poor state of the remains only the head and one wing could be preserved and shipped back to mainland France, arriving late in the year.  These remains were deemed acceptable as a holotype for the proposal of a new species, resulting in publishing this “description” in a French-language publication (L’Oiseau et R.F.O, now defunct). This had the consequence of limiting the readership and impact of the discovery.  However, despite this the news spread throughout the seabird world.  Peter Harrison included the new species in the first revision of his seminal Seabirds and Identification Guide as early as 1985.

My first proposal was to name the new species as Diomedea pauliani in honour of Patrice Paulian and his early insight and for publishing the first photograph of Amsterdam’s great albatross, but in the end it became Diomedea amsterdamensis.

Displaying Amsterdam Albatrosses

Subsequently, a long-term monitoring programme was set up for the Endangered Amsterdam Albatross, which then led to the production of a species action plan and efforts to rehabilitate the island’s ecology.  The feral cattle which had contributed to vegetation degradation and soil erosion and were occupying more than 70% of the island area, were eventually limited to a smaller area by fences and then eliminated by 2010 (click here).

With grateful thanks to Karine Delord, Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, for information, including Paulian's historical photograph.

Selected Publications:

Jouventin, P., Martinez, J. & Roux, J.-P. 1989. Breeding biology and current status of the Amsterdam Island Albatross Diomedea amsterdamensis.  Ibis 131: 171-182.

Jouventin, P. & Roux, J-P. 1983.   Discovery of a new albatross.  Nature 305: 181.

Jouventin, P. & Roux, J-P. 1984.  L’Albatros d’Amsterdam va-t-il disparaître à peine découvert?  La Recherche, 15: 250-252.

Paulian, P. 1953.  Pinnipèdes, cétacés, oiseaux des Iles Kerguelen et Amsterdam: mission Kerguelen 1951. Mémoires de l’Institut Scientifique de Madagascar Série A Tome VIII.

Roux, J.-P., Jouventin, P., Mougin, J.-L., Stahl, J.C. & Weimerskirch, H. 1983.  Un nouvel albatros Diomedea amsterdamensis n. sp. découvert sur l’île Amsterdam (37°50’S, 77°35’E).  L’Oiseau et R.F.O. 53: 1-11.

Roux, J.-P. `& Martinez, J. 1987.  Rare, vagrant and introduced birds at Amsterdam and Saint Paul Islands, southern Indian Ocean.  Cormorant 14: 3-19.

Jean-Paul Roux, Lüderitz, Namibia, 10 March 2022

White-chinned Petrel in PanPastels by ABUN artist Rosana Venturini for ACAP; photograph by Andy Wood

Carlos Linares (Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Idaho, USA) and colleagues have published in the journal Emu - Austral Ornithology on using acoustic recorders to assess population densities of Vulnerable White-chinned Petrels Procellaria aequinoctialis in a breeding colony.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Monitoring of population sizes and trends using conventional surveys is challenging for nocturnal, burrow-nesting seabirds. The White-chinned Petrel is the most commonly killed species in Southern Ocean fisheries and its breeding success at many sites is reduced because of predation by invasive cats and rodents. As adaptive management of such threats requires cost-effective and reproducible protocols for monitoring populations, we examined the potential of automated bioacoustic techniques for measuring colony attendance patterns (relative number of birds visiting at a given time) using data from acoustic recorders deployed over a breeding season at Bird Island, South Georgia. Generic recognition software was of limited utility, but a suite of acoustic indices in a random forest model reliably predicted the occurrence of vocalisations. Vocal activity showed clear temporal patterns, despite high day-to-day variability, and was lowest during the pre-laying period, in the early evening, and on moonlit nights. To facilitate estimation of population density using acoustic recorders, we determined the mean vocalisation rate of individuals (2.3 min⁻¹), mean call length (~15.3 sec), and detection distance (~15 m based on signal to noise ratios of playbacks). Our results indicate that acoustic indices are a useful measure of colony attendance. If these indices can be linked to density, acoustic monitoring would provide a powerful and cost-effective census method for White-chinned Petrels and other nocturnal species.:

With thanks to Richard Phillips.

Reference:

Linares, C.G., Phillips, R.A. & Buxton, R.T. 2022.  Monitoring vocal activity and temporal patterns in attendance of White-chinned Petrels using bioacoustics.  Emu - Austral Ornithology DOI: 10.1080/01584197.2021.2018337.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 March 2022

 
Southern Giant Petrel breeding on Long Beach, Gough Island, watercolour by Susanne Durchholz; after a photograph by Michelle Risi

Note:  The illustrated Species Summaries have been written to help inform the general public, including school learners, of the biology and conservation needs of the 31 ACAP-listed species.  They serve to complement the more detailed and referenced ACAP Species Assessments.  To date, summaries for the 22 species of albatrosses have been produced in in all three ACAP official languages, English, French and Spanish.

Texts have also been prepared for the nine ACAP-listed petrels and shearwaters in English, but as yet have not been translated into French and Spanish.  As an interim service, the illustrated English texts are being posted to ACAP Latest News, starting here with the Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus.

A Southern Giant Petrel broods its small chick on Marion Island; photograph by John Dickens

The Southern Giant Petrel is one of the two largest petrels in the family Procellariidae.  They are so large they do not need to breed in burrows to be protected from predators.  The closely related and similar looking Northern Giant Petrel was only recognized as a separate species in the 1960s.

The Southern Giant Petrel occurs in two colour phases.  Most birds are all-over brown with a yellowish to horn-coloured bill which has a diagnostic green tip, separating it from the northern species which has a reddish tip to its bill.  Brown-phase juveniles have a plain dark brown plumage, older birds become variously mottled with pale brown to grey feathers.  The rarer white-phase birds are overall white with a scattering of black body feathers.  Males are larger than females, most noticeable when the bills of a breeding pair are compared side by side.

The species breeds in the austral summer on many Southern Ocean islands and on the Antarctic Continent, laying a single egg on the ground in colonies, that may vary greatly in size.  The global population was estimated at 48 000 - 54 000 pairs in 2008/09.  By far the largest numbers (19 500 pairs) are found in the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, a disputed territory* in the South Atlantic.  The northernmost breeding site is Gough Island, where a few hundred pairs breed.  Colonies also exist on the Antarctic Continent, including on islands along the Antarctic Peninsula – where more white-phase birds are present, compared with the sub-Antarctic island populations.  Population trends vary throughout the species’ range but are increasing in the large colonies in the South Atlantic, resulting in the species being categorized as of Least Concern.

Southern Giant Petrels may be seen at sea throughout the Southern Ocean, as well as offshore along the coasts of southern Africa and southern South America.  Banding and tracking studies show individuals can travel great distances.  The species’ diet is catholic, scavenging on seal carcasses and preying on seabirds, including penguins, on land and feeding on marine life (krill, squid, fish) caught at sea, as well as scavenging behind fishing vessels.  The smaller females feed more than males do at sea, thought due to their avoiding competing with larger males scavenging ashore.

Threats included being killed as bycatch by longline fisheries, notably by IUU (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated) fisheries for toothfish in the Southern Ocean in the 1990s; now largely eliminated by the adoption of mitigation measures (such as deploying bird-scaring lines) by the legal fisheries and concerted international action against the poaching vessels.  Human disturbance at breeding sites, including from tourists, is largely addressed by way of management plans or equivalents defining minimum approach distances.  Most breeding sites are proclaimed nature reserves or equivalents, several with international status coming from the World Heritage and Ramsar Wetlands Conventions.  Most of the sub-Antarctic islands where the species breeds are surrounded by large Marine Protected Areas.

Sources:

ACAP 2012.  Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus.

BirdLife International 2021.  Species factsheet:  Macronectes giganteus.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 March 2022

*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.

“My Heart is Yours”, Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis for World Albatross Day 2022 by Marion Schön of Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature, in pastels; after a photograph by Hob Osterlund

The Seventh Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Agreement (MoP7) will be held online from 9-13 May 2022 (UTC+10).  This follows on from the meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee (AC12) and two of its working groups last year, held virtually due to travel and other restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The meeting’s First Circular (available in ACAP’s three official languages of English, French and Spanish), gives key dates for notification of proposed amendments to the Agreement, circulation of meeting reports, submission of working documents and information papers, and for applications by entities to attend MoP7 as an international or non-international observer.  The circular also includes a provisional agenda for the meeting, which includes hearing a report from AC12, itself reflecting reports from its Seabird Bycatch (SBWG10) and Population and Conservation Status (PaCSWG6) Working Groups, held over August/September last year.

ACAP last met in person at AC11 in Florianópolis, Brazil during May 2019.  The previous Session of the Meeting of Parties (MoP6) was held in Skukuza, Kruger National Park, South Africa during May 2018.

More information about the arrangements for MoP7 will be made available soon in Circular 2.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 March 2022