United States

Welcome Seabirders!  

Welcome to Virtual World Seabird Conference 3 - vWSC3! Whether you are in your office or lab, at home, in a coffee shop or bar poaching some wifi, or at a remote field site or research vessel – we are very excited to welcome you to the third ever World Seabird Conference. 

We would like to thank ALL of you for being so patient as WSC3 was scheduled, postponed, rescheduled, revised to virtual, and scheduled again. Throughout all those iterations there was one message that remained perfectly clear – seabirders were eager to meet and share their science. If we could not meet in person then virtual it would have to be, but a 3rd WSC was something everyone wanted. That support and commitment helped the WSU Board of Directors and Member Societies sort through all of the challenges they faced to plan and hold this conference. 

The list of those that need to be thanked is long and, while we plan on recognizing many during the live closing plenary, it is important to do so here in writing as well. 

The Australasian Seabird Group was our Local Host for our plan to meet in Hobart, Tasmania. They invested substantial time and effort to find venues and plan events that we unfortunately were not able to visit. Nonetheless we appreciate their work on behalf of WSC3 and encourage all of you to thank them when you see their members in Gathertown or elsewhere during our virtual meeting. Their willingness to host created the initial excitement for WSC3 and without that our vWSC would not have been possible.

We also wish to thank the Science Program Committee, the Virtual Committee, and the Early Career Scientist Committee for their hard work planning the logistics, events, and schedule for vWSC3. These committees also had to deal with changing parameters and short timelines that made what is always a challenging task even more challenging. The Travel Awards Committee also invested time and effort in developing procedures for awarding travel funds that ultimately would not be implemented. 

Our ability to shift from an in-person to a virtual meeting, and to do so in a way that would be financially feasible, was due to the effective efforts of The International Fundraising Committee and to our financial sponsors. The IFC raised funds to support WSC3 and then, through the good relationships they built with sponsors, ensured we could re-envision how those funds could be used to support a virtual conference that would be affordable and high-quality.

We all owe the WSU Board of Directors and the Representatives of the Member Societies a great deal of thanks. They are the ones who manage the WSU and, for the past 18 months, have had to have a series of challenging meetings and conversations, have had to make a series of difficult choices, have had to do all of that while considering the short- and long-term health of WSU and the World Seabird Conferences, and did this while also managing their own challenges at their day jobs. We are grateful for their diligence, patience, foresight, and throughout all of the meetings, their collegiality. Also – a 6-year term is quite a commitment!

There would not be a WSC3 without a successful WSC1 and WSC2. Thanks go to the Pacific Seabird Group for their support of WSC1 in Victoria, Canada, and to the African Seabird Group for their support of WSC2 in Cape Town, South Africa. In each of these endeavors and for our current conference we were fortunate to work with a dependable and trustworthy partner in Podium Conferences. Michelle Smith and Marischal de Armond have become valued members of our team and have not only helped us plan conferences but have assisted and advised the WSU Chairs and Board on issues above and beyond conference planning. 

As we embark on our vWSC3 week we extend to all of you our thanks for showing up, for being patient, and most importantly for the work you do with seabirds. We are all part of a unique, global community that shares an interest, a fascination, and a passion for birds that make a living in our world’s oceans. We have advanced the science, conservation, and management of seabirds as well the ecosystems they inhabit. We are consistently impressed and motivated by the work you do. 

The WSU formed in 2010 because we saw the need for a global organization to address challenges at a global level. Over the past 11 years WSU has grown, adapted, and evolved to become the community that this week is making vWSC3 a reality. Enjoy the week, appreciate and support the friends and colleagues you have made in the community, and if you see us in a virtual hallway please stop and say hello! 

Thank you for the opportunity to serve all of you and the WSU over the past few years,

Nicholas Carlile, Interim Chair, WSU<br>
Patrick Jodice, 2nd Chair of the WSU<br><br>

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3rd World Seabird Conference

Join us for four days of science, networking and virtual engagement with delegates from around the world!

**Abstract:**

Breeding failure is expected to induce behavioural changes in central place foraging seabirds. Indeed, failed breeders do not have to regularly come back to their colony for reproductive duties and thus, they are not constrained anymore in their movements for the rest of the breeding season. Accordingly, they are expected to adjust their at-sea behaviour, travelling longer in distance and/or time to reach foraging grounds. They are also expected to use different foraging areas to decrease local intra-specific competition with successful breeders. However, so far, only few studies have investigated the effect of breeding failure on individual behaviour and distribution. In this study, we compared the at-sea behaviour and habitat use of successful and failed Indian yellow-nosed albatrosses nesting in Amsterdam Island, Southern Indian Ocean, during two chick-rearing periods. Failed breeders exhibited the same at-sea foraging behaviour, travelling as far and as long as successful breeders. They also spent the same amount of time on their nest between at-sea trips. Nevertheless, habitat models revealed a partial spatial segregation of failed breeders, which used specific foraging areas characterized by deeper and colder waters, in addition to the ones they shared with successful breeders. Our study stresses the importance of considering breeding failure when aiming at understanding the spatial distribution of individuals, especially in a conservation perspective.

**Authors:**

Aurore Ponchon¹, Amandine Gamble², Inkeri Ahtiainen¹, Jeremy Tornos³, Karine Delord⁴, Christophe Barbraud⁴, Justin Travis¹, Henri Weimerskirch⁴, Thierry Boulinier⁵

¹University of Aberdeen, ²University of California Los Angeles, ³CEFE-CNRS UMR 5175, ⁴CEBC-UMR 7372, ⁵CEFE-CNRS-UMR5175

Similar foraging behaviour but different habitat use between failed and successful breeding albatrosses

technical paper

From immuno-ecology to conservation: how deciphering physiological mechanisms can help conservation

Telomere length as a biomarker of individual state: heritability, reflection of environment, and link to population trends

Understanding the association of localised seabird foraging and physical dynamics to help predict responses to environmental change

Changing diet in seabirds from Pacific Canada over 50 years: evidence from amino acid-specific stable isotope analysis

Assessing millennial-scale changes in seabird colony size using paleoenvironmental techniques: Case studies of Leach's Storm-Petrels in Eastern North America

Climate change impacts on multi-species seabird wintering hotspots in the North Atlantic - An energyscape approach

The importance of multi-colony and multi-species studies for seabird conservation

Diffuse patterns of at-sea movements by tropical seabirds

Reduced foraging effort at the expanding range margin could facilitate poleward shift in a colonial seabird, the Northern gannet Morus bassanus

Causes and consequences of individual variation in migratory patterns of Brown Pelicans

symposium

https://d3smihljt9218e.cloudfront.net/transcript/22763/subtitle/1b338e8754377db80eadfe4ad34da664.vtt

English

Similar foraging behaviour but different habitat use between failed and successful breeding albatrosses

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Next from 3rd World Seabird Conference

From immuno-ecology to conservation: how deciphering physiological mechanisms can help conservation

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The foraging effort of the Wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) during breeding and migration seasons