News stories

Partners protecting penguins

• Outreach for albatrosses in ports

• Seabird success in Argentina

• New marine Important Bird Areas

Sea ChangeIssue 13 July 2017

BirdLife International Marine Programme newsletter

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Protecting penguins

Protecting the rainforest penguin

What are black, white and highly threatened?

Forest & Bird, The BirdLife Partner in New Zealand, has been protecting unique habitats and species since 1929. It is now trying to save the world’s rarest penguin.

New Zealand is a special place for penguins. Five species breed there and three of these are found nowhere else in the world. The yellow-eyed penguin only exists on the south east coast and the uninhabited Campbell and Auckland subantarctic Islands.

In 1981, members of the Southland Branch of the Forest & Bird Society established a 90 hectare reserve for the yellow-eyed penguins at Te Rere. This is in the south-west of New Zealand’s South Island and is a remote home to some 50 yellow-eyed penguins, as well as the aptly-named little penguin, the world’s smallest penguin species.

The BirdLife Partner in New Zealand is stepping up to save the world’s rarest penguin.

Penguins, of course! And the BirdLife International Partnership has launched a campaign to turn things around for this remarkable group of birds.

Protecting penguins

Flightless penguins may seem a world apart from albatrosses, the most proficient fliers in the seabird world. But they share their reliance on the sea for survival and a largely southerly distribution, with breeding islands from West Point Island in the Falkland Islands, to the Antipodes Island off New Zealand. They also share the rather dubious honour of being highly threatened.

After albatrosses, penguins are the most threatened group of seabirds. Ten of the 18 species are threatened with extinction, and a further three are listed as Near Threatened. There are a variety of reasons for this, as shown in the diagram below.

Penguins are, of course, well-loved birds, and there are many organisations and individuals working to improve their prospects. Indeed, several BirdLife Partners have been working to protect penguins for some time now, and a number of these projects are highlighted in this edition of Sea Change. The BirdLife Marine Programme has also played a key role in penguin conservation through our collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey, drawing together tracking data to identify marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (see page 7).

However, given the perilous state of many penguin populations, it is clear that there is more to do. To rise to

this challenge, BirdLife has launched a global penguin campaign to raise awareness of, and funds for, new penguin conservation work across the Partnership – through Partners Aves Argentinas (Argentina), CODEFF (Chile), Falklands Conservation (Falkland Islands/Malvinas), BirdLife South Africa and Forest & Bird (New Zealand).

We hope to examine and tackle bycatch of Magellanic and Humboldt penguins in small-scale argentinean and Chilean fisheries, establish a new colony and better understand prey fish populations for African penguins. As well as tracking southern rockhopper and gentoo penguins from the Falkland Islands and improving at-sea protection for a number of Antarctic species.

It is sometimes said that seabirds experience the worst of both worlds on land and at sea. We are calling on the public to show their love of penguins to help turn this situation around, by helping us to tackle the major threats to these charismatic seabirds wherever they occur.

We are incredibly thankful to the Osaka Gala Dinner and Tokyo Gala Dinner for supporting our conservation work to help protect penguins.

Want to know more? To find out more about the campaign and to pledge your support, visit penguin.birdlife.org or contact Maggie Balaskas at maggie.balaskas@birdlife.org

Vladislav T. Jirousek (shutterstock.com

)

The endangered yellow-eyed penguin, endemic to New Zealand and facing threats on land and at sea.

There are only around 3,000 yellow-eyed penguins left in the world, a third of which nest at mainland sites like Te Rere. Their continued existence is threatened by introduced predators, loss or degradation of their forest and shrub land nesting habitat to farming, disease (diphtheria infection), and changes in food supply at sea, where they are also accidentally caught in fishing nets.

To improve the odds for this rainforest dwelling penguin the work at Te Rere has included fencing out farm animals, re-establishing native trees, penguin monitoring and, crucially, the control of predators by trapping. Recent funding through the BirdLife partnership has helped to expand the network of predator traps and support the ongoing tree planting by volunteers. Thankfully the birds at

Te Rere have escaped the disease that has affected some penguins elsewhere, however, the numbers of birds and nests have gone down over the past three years, reflecting a trend across the mainland colonies.

Reduced food supply, as a result of oceanic temperature and current changes, is thought to be one cause of this worrying decline. This makes it even more important to ensure the bird’s breeding habitat is well managed and that marine protection is improved.

Want to know more?Please visit yellow-eyedpenguin.org.nz or contact Fergus Sutherland at fergus.sutherland@icloud.com

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BycatchProtecting penguins

Argentina to save seabirdsIn 2016, we reported that the Argentinean hake trawl fishery was one of just three Albatross Task Force (ATF) target fisheries that had not yet introduced regulations to reduce seabird bycatch.

Africa’s only native penguin is affected by overfishing.

New homes for penguins

African penguins are at risk of extinction. Facing a tangle of inter-related threats, the most pressing is a lack of food – specifically sardines and anchovies, their preferred prey. These small fish were once abundant, but a shift in their distribution due to climate change, as well as commercial fishing, has left the penguins wanting.

In South Africa, African penguins breed in several colonies on the west and south coasts, separated by a 600 km stretch of coastline with no suitable breeding islands. However, the 600 km gap is now an area of high fish availability. To bring the penguins closer to their prey, and reduce the fragmentation in their distribution, BirdLife South Africa is working to establish new penguin colonies in this area of higher fish abundance.

The rich waters off the coast of Argentina are important feeding areas for seabirds. However, they’re also vital for fishermen. This results in a staggering 13,500 black-browed albatrosses being accidentally killed here every year.

Early in 2017 we met with fisheries observer agencies from Argentina and Chile, and our local partner organisa-tions. This resulted in the signing of a declaration recognising the important role observer agencies have to play in monitoring the compliance of future regulations in the Southern Cone. For bycatch reductions to be sustainable in the long-term, monitoring needs to be a routine part of an observer’s role,

and the declaration was an important step towards this.

The timing was apt, as just two months later the Federal Fisheries Council, which regulates fisheries in Argentina, unanimously approved a resolution for the use of bird-scaring lines on trawlers. This will be volun-tary until May 2018, after which it will become mandatory.

Our ATF team in Argentina, has worked tirelessly to lobby government to introduce binding bycatch regulations, so this is welcome news, and we hope to see substantial reductions in seabirds deaths in the coming years!

BirdLife South Africa has embarked on an ambitious collaborative effort to establish new breeding colonies for the beleaguered African penguin.

Two suitable sites have been identified and BirdLife South Africa will use decoys and call playback to attract penguins. They will also move just-fledged birds to induce them to return to the new sites to breed. As penguins breeding on the mainland are vulnerable to predators, lots of protection will be put in place to help the penguins establish and thrive. We hope there will be exciting times ahead for the African penguin. BirdLife South Africa has partnered with several organisations, including the Nature’s Valley Trust, BirdLife Plettenberg Bay, CapeNature and the Population Reinforcement Working Group (conservation organisations working with the Department of Environmental Affairs). The work is funded by Pamela Isdell.

Want to know more?Please contact Christina Hagen at christina.hagen@birdlife.org.za

28 years and still countingFive penguin species inhabit the Falkland Islands (Malvinas). Sarah Crofts, of Falklands Conservation, describes the long-term monitoring effort.

All five species of penguin on the Falkland Islands – king, gentoo, Magellanic, macaroni and southern rockhopper – are monitored by Falklands Conservation as part of the Falkland Islands Seabird Monitoring Programme.

It is one of our highest conservation priorities with significant effort invested. Methods used range from direct counts to drone imagery. Now with 27 years of data, we have an improved understanding of penguin populations.

The threats to penguins are mostly at sea. During the monitoring programme we’ve seen penguin populations declining and recovering in line with large and cyclical fluctuations in the marine environment.

Over the last 10 years, populations of southern rockhoppers and gentoos – a particular focus of the programme – have been recovering. However, 2016 records showed a significant shift into the next declining phase. A 30%

Ross W

anless

Safe port of callRaising awareness of bycatch is a challenge within globally dispersed and multi-national tuna fishing fleets, but BirdLife has been working with Partners to test a novel approach to reach out to crews in port.High Seas pelagic longline vessels can spend months or years at sea. Spreading the message to crews about albatross bycatch and the miti-gation measures that exist presents a real challenge for fisheries managers and industry. Port-based outreach (PBO) provides one possible solution, reaching the boats in port when they come in to refuel, repair and re-stock.

Port Louis, Mauritius, is a major stop-off for Taiwanese longliners targeting tuna in the Indian Ocean. Last year we conducted a PBO pilot in collaboration with the Taiwan Fisheries Agency, Chinese Wild Bird Federation and the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation. A total of 83 vessels were reached through this approach, which was funded by the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, and conducted by Taiwanese instruc-tors operating in the port.

In parallel, through the GEF-FAO Com-mon Oceans Tuna Project, BirdLife South Africa has been implementing outreach in Cape Town, a significant port for longliners close to the con-fluence of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The range of fishing nations using the port requires interpreters to work with PBO officers to get the message across in the right language.

Engaging with boats in port helps to ensure that the bycatch issue and the specifics of regulations are disseminat-ed broadly through the fleets. It also gives an opportunity to understand any challenges and concerns from the captains and crew. Resolving issues with different fishing gear is a crucial step to ensure mitigation is accepted and used. Next, this approach will be trialled with the growing Chinese longline fleet in the Pacific.

Want to know more?For South Africa, please contact pete.watt-pringle@birdlife.org.za For Taiwan, contact mayumi.sato@birdlife.org

A video camera on a pole provides an effective way to survey colonies.

Black-brow

ed albatross by Leo Tamini

Want to know more?

Please contact Stephanie Winnard at

stephanie.winnard@rspb.org.uk

PBO Instructor Mr Tsai discusses bycatch mitigation onboard.

decrease in breeding pairs of southern rockhoppers was recorded between November 2015 and November 2016. There was a similar decrease in breeding pairs for gentoos too.

The penguin counts inform conservation action. Careful monitoring will be critical to track against the previous rates of decline and lowest threshold values of past cycles. At the moment we’re watching closely, but haven’t quite yet hit the panic button.

Want to know more?Please contact Sarah Crofts at cso@conservation.org.fk

Sarah C

rofts

Alton Liao (B

irdLife International)

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Special seabird sites Bycatch

Tackling Japanese gillnet threat

Hokkaido, the most northerly of Japan’s main islands, hosts a number of nationally and internationally important seabird nesting sites.

Penguins, puffins and Arctic terns

Fair wind for Seabird Task Force What do they have in common? Yes, they all depend on healthy seas and make epic ocean journeys, but they now share something else – they have joined the list of species for which a brand new set of marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) was designated. Senior Marine Science Officer, Maria Dias, takes us on a one year world tour.

2016 was busy for the BirdLife marine team. From the high latitudes of the Russian Far East south to the Antarctic Peninsula, more than 100 new marine IBAs were identified, aiming to protect special sites for more than 90 seabird species.

January 2016, in the heat and bustle of BirdLife’s Dakar office. The Alcyon Project, funded by the MAVA Foundation and aiming to identify the most important marine sites in West Africa, entered its final year. At this point, almost all tracking datasets were stored in seabirdtracking.org. Only one “little” thing missing – the analysis of thousands of bird locations, to delineate foraging

The globetrotting Arctic tern or “sea swallow” is a common feature of the recently identified marine IBAs.

Tony Brindley (S

hutterstock)

Seabird bycatch has been a growing concern in Japan’s coastal waters where gillnets are widely used in small-scale fisheries.

Teurito, a small island off Hokkaido’s east coast, is home to the largest colony of rhinoceros auklets in the world, as well as the last remaining breeding colony of the common murre (common guillemots) in Japan.

While in the 1960s, an estimated 8,000 common murres were recorded as breeding, there are now only about 30 individuals left. Information is sparse, but it is thought likely that this is due to a decline in their prey, and accidental gillnet bycatch, particularly in salmon drift nets.

In 2016, BirdLife and its Partner, Wild Bird Society of Japan, trialled using high visibility black and white net panels, as a potential means to reduce bycatch, working with a local Fishermen’s Association and a gillnet fisherman from Teurito Island.

The Seabird Task Force (STF) launched in early 2015 to tackle bycatch in Europe. The last year has seen the STF gather momentum, testing mitigation measures and expanding into two more countries.

hotspots for seabirds in the region. The efforts bore fruit: 13 new marine IBAs were identified and another four updated for local species, such as the Cape Verde shearwater, as well as visitors including Arctic terns and south polar skuas.

Skip forward a few weeks and 13,000 km and The Wild Bird Society of Japan and BirdLife International Tokyo announced the identification of 27 new marine IBAs. This came about through a long process involving many collaborators and a large amount of data. More than simply delineating an area on a map, this work brought together information on breeding sites, threats, and biology on the 18 trigger species for which sites were selected, and showcased local communities’ seabird conservation work.

Shifting to Russia, marine IBA sites were identified for 68 species. This was the result of an initiative of the Russian Society for Conservation and Studies of Birds (BirdsRussia), joining up with ornithologists to identify 40 IBAs of global importance for seabirds. These sites cover more than 23 million hectares! This vast area

is home to beautiful horned puffins, tufted puffins, and of course Arctic terns.

And finally, the penguins in the title. They are BirdLife’s seabird stars this year and for this edition of Sea Change, but our work with them started years ago. In collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey and several scientists, with the support of the Darwin Initiative and the Pew Charitable Trusts, we last year compiled tracking data for three species breeding in the Antarctic Peninsula. The result was a network of 12 marine sites for gentoo, chinstrap and Adélie penguins, the first of its kind in these cold waters.

Now it is time to advocate for the protection and management of these special sites. And to identify more in other priority areas such as South America, Southern Africa and the north Atlantic. So penguins, puffins, and Arctic terns, we will meet again soon!

Want to know more? Please contact Maria Dias at maria.dias@birdlife.org

We are now working in Lithuania, Spain, Portugal and Poland. In Spain, our team working with demersal longline vessels had a busy year, greatly helped by ATF Programme Manager Oliver Yates visiting the field site in Llanca and meeting with observers and fishermen.

This helped identify the most appropriate mitigation measures to try. We are trialling a Chilean method of setting fishing lines in a vertical rather than horizontal set up, which has proven extremely successful at reducing bycatch in Chile and elsewhere. April/May is the peak season in the Spanish Mediterranean for Critically Endangered Balearic shearwaters as they forage close to their breeding sites. It’s a crucial time to see if this Chilean method can work for both the fishermen and seabirds in the Med.

In all the other countries we’ve been focused on testing experimental gillnet mitigation measures: high contrast panels (see above) and net lights. We’re still crunching the numbers from

Rhinoceros auklets are abundant on Teurito.

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The net panel trial demonstrated a reduction in bycatch, but incurred operational issues and impacted the target fish catch. Despite this setback, a strong collaboration has been built with local fishers, and we are planning to conduct more investigations in the summer of 2017 to find solutions that work for both seabirds and fishers.

We remain hopeful that the threats can be reduced so that in future Teurito’s cliffs will once again be covered with common murres.

Want to know more?Please contact Mayumi Sato at mayumi.sato@birdlife.org

the last field season, which has seen lots of extra data collected on bycatch under normal fishing conditions versus our experimental set up. The results will be particularly exciting for the panel tests in Lithuania, where last year’s field work showed that there had been a reduction in bycatch – although not statistically significant. Watch this space for news on how effective the mitigation measures that we are testing are in reducing bycatch and keep up with the latest progress at seabirdbycatch.com.

Want to know more?Please contact Marguerite Tarzia at marguerite.tarzia@birdlife.org

Seaducks are prone to gillnet bycatch.

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End notesThe BirdLife International Marine Programme is co-ordinated, on behalf of the BirdLife International Partnership, by the RSPB (BirdLife Partner in the UK).

For more information, please contact us at marine@birdlife.org

The RSPB is a member of Birdlife International, a partnership of conservation organisations working to give nature a home around the world.

BirdLife International, The David Attenborough Building, 1st Floor, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QZ, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0)1223 277 318

birdlife.org

This newsletter was produced by the RSPB, a registered charity in England & Wales 207076, in Scotland SC037654. 090-1-1953-16-17

Front cover: yellow-eyed penguin by Henner Damke (shutterstock.com)

The RSPB is the country’s largest nature conservation charity, inspiring everyone to give nature a home.

September 2017

4–8 4th International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC4), La Serena-Coquimbo, Chile11–15 Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 10th Meeting of the Advisory Committee

(AC10), Wellington, New Zealand

18–21 ICES Annual Science Conference, Fort Lauderdale, US25–29 52nd European Marine Biology Symposium, Portorož, Slovenia

October 2017

5–6 Our Ocean 2017 Conference, MaltaMarch 2018

12–16 March 6th International Marine Debris Conference (6IMDC), San Diego, USA

May 2018

20–23 World Conference on Marine Biodiversity 2018, Montreal, Canada

Here a Falklands Conservation penguin counter gets elevation on the roof to count gentoo penguins. Read more on page 4.

Julie McInnes

A storm brewing for penguins

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