United States

**Abstract:**

Over recent years, accelerometers have proven to be a powerful tool for the identification and quantification of animal behavior. Even though in seabird species this technique has allowed to identify activities such as diving, floating and flying, until now it has never been used to identify and analyze parental food provisioning events. In the present study, we applied the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm to identify food provisioning behaviors from triaxial accelerometer data from breeding Imperial shags (Leucocarbo atriceps). A total of 15 breeding females were equipped with an accelerometer on the head which was programmed to record data at 50 Hz and left on the bird for less than 24 h. In order to label acceleration data, females were filmed during chick feeding and non-feeding events by means of a video camera. Fed chicks were categorized according to age in young and old (less and more than 7 days, respectively). Acceleration features from feeding and non-feeding periods were calculated using a sliding window of 1 s with a 0.98 s overlap. Finally, one SVM was run for each chick category, using a cost value of 1. SVMs correctly classified the feeding and non-feeding events in the 84 and 93% of the cases, for young and old chicks, respectively. However, the specific classification of food provisioning events (recall score), was correct for 79% of young and 95% of old fed chicks. Of the calculated features, those derived from the surge and heave acceleration axes and the pitch angle were the most important for distinguishing feeding from non-feeding behaviors. Our results suggest that accelerometry can be successfully employed to recognize food provisioning events in the Imperial Shag and can be applied in a wider spectrum of seabird species.

**Authors:**

María Monserrat Del Caño¹, Flavio Quintana¹, Giacomo Dell&#39;Omo², Agustina Gómez Laich³

¹Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos (IBIOMAR), CONICET, ²Ornis Italica, ³Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires (IEGEBA), CONICET

3rd World Seabird Conference

Triaxial accelerometry allows to determine chick feeding events in a marine bird

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

**Abstract:**

Over recent years, accelerometers have proven to be a powerful tool for the identification and quantification of animal behavior. Even though in seabird species this technique has allowed to identify activities such as diving, floating and flying, until now it has never been used to identify and analyze parental food provisioning events. In the present study, we applied the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm to identify food provisioning behaviors from triaxial accelerometer data from breeding Imperial shags (Leucocarbo atriceps). A total of 15 breeding females were equipped with an accelerometer on the head which was programmed to record data at 50 Hz and left on the bird for less than 24 h. In order to label acceleration data, females were filmed during chick feeding and non-feeding events by means of a video camera. Fed chicks were categorized according to age in young and old (less and more than 7 days, respectively). Acceleration features from feeding and non-feeding periods were calculated using a sliding window of 1 s with a 0.98 s overlap. Finally, one SVM was run for each chick category, using a cost value of 1. SVMs correctly classified the feeding and non-feeding events in the 84 and 93% of the cases, for young and old chicks, respectively. However, the specific classification of food provisioning events (recall score), was correct for 79% of young and 95% of old fed chicks. Of the calculated features, those derived from the surge and heave acceleration axes and the pitch angle were the most important for distinguishing feeding from non-feeding behaviors. Our results suggest that accelerometry can be successfully employed to recognize food provisioning events in the Imperial Shag and can be applied in a wider spectrum of seabird species.

**Authors:**

María Monserrat Del Caño¹, Flavio Quintana¹, Giacomo Dell'Omo², Agustina Gómez Laich³

¹Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos (IBIOMAR), CONICET, ²Ornis Italica, ³Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires (IEGEBA), CONICET

poster

**Abstract:**

The provision of artificial breeding sites has been used very successfully around the world as a practical means of managing populations limited by breeding site availability. Over 1000 nest-boxes have been installed on Phillip Island for penguins and up to 90% of the boxes are used for breeding, shelter and moulting. Nest-boxes, persist as breeding sites much longer than most natural sites, sometimes for decades, are excavated less frequently and accumulate significant amounts of excreta. Therefore nest-boxes may harbour a different suite of microbial species than natural burrows with potential implications for penguin health. In addition, soil type may influence the microbial community of a nesting site. This raises the questions, is the microbial community in boxes similar to that in natural burrows? And are birds nesting in boxes at greater risk of disease? This study compared the microbial composition of natural and nest boxes on different soil types to answer these questions. The results from this study have shown that the microbial community (composition and diversity) of penguin burrows differs significantly with time (pre and post-breeding), nest type (natural vs artificial) and soil type (sand vs clay), indicating that artificial burrows, soil composition and penguin attendance influence the microbial composition. However, despite having different microbial communities, nest-boxes had a better breeding success in comparison to natural burrows, reinforcing an earlier study and gives us confidence to continue using nest-boxes to increase the availability of nest sites and enhance penguin adaptation to climate change.

**Authors:**

Meagan Dewar¹, Eric Woehler², Peter Dann³, Theo Allnutt⁴

¹Federation University Australia/IPECS, ²University of Tasmania, ³Phillip Island Nature Parks, ⁴Theo Allnutt Bioinformatics

Microbial ecology of natural and artificial penguin burrows: implications for reproductive success, penguin health and conservation management

**Abstract:**

New Zealand (NZ) has been called the 'seabird capital of the world', with nearly 25% of the world's species occurring there, and 10 % of global seabird species only breeding in NZ. Seabirds play a key role in coastal and terrestrial ecosystems by importing marine sources of phosphorus. In New Zealand ecosystems this role is particularly important as phosphorus is a limiting nutrient, making seabirds a key agent for nutrient cycling. Despite contemporary seabird diversity and abundance appearing high in NZ, the fossil bone record reveals they were more abundant before human arrival c. 750 years ago and the subsequent plethora of mammalian predators that have been introduced in the last 200 years. The rapid demise of seabirds has meant that little is known about where they used to breed around NZ and the degree of their influence on native ecosystems, although in some places it is clear that some nutrient fluxes have collapsed. Here, I present species distribution models of contemporary and prehuman breeding sites for NZ's seabirds built using presence-only data. We collated records of seabird breeding colonies and aggregated them into functionally similar groups. Contemporary seabird presence data were combined with climatic and environmental predictors to predict the distribution of each functional group. The results of these present-day models were then used to hindcast onto prehuman paleo-environmental conditions (> 1000 ybp) to create maps of the distribution of each functional group. Understanding the past and present distributions of seabird colonies will inform us of which habitats they favour for breeding and the processes that have restricted their current breeding grounds. These distributions can also be used to guide conservation management decisions regarding the most suitable sites for habitat restoration and translocation. Moreover, identifying past and present breeding sites will provide a basis for characterizing the change in nutrient flux dynamics, which are an integral component of NZs forest ecosystems.

**Authors:**

André Bellvé¹, Janet Wilmshurst¹, Jamie Wood², Edin Whitehead³, Chris Gaskin⁴, George Perry³

¹University of Auckland / Manaaki Whenua, ²Manaaki Whenua, ³University of Auckland, ⁴Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust

Burrowing into the past: Reconstructing the prehuman distribution of New Zealands seabirds

**Abstract:**

Invasive alien species are the most prevalent threat to seabirds worldwide. Recent syntheses demonstrate the progress that has been made in tackling this threat and facilitating seabird recovery, but they've also highlighted deficiencies in outcome monitoring. Australia's Macquarie Island, a Tasmanian State Reserve and World Heritage Site, has received major conservation investment for the management of invasive predators. The eradication of rabbits, rats and mice in 2011-2014 is the second largest eradication globally to date. One of the main motivations for pest management was to improve the status of nationally threatened seabird populations, although no specific recovery targets exist. We report the results of a three-year study to quantify short-term post-eradication responses of four burrowing petrels and consider longer-term responses based upon current trajectories. Blue Petrels and Grey Petrels were virtually or entirely extirpated from mainland Macquarie Island in the 20th Century. Population size, range and breeding productivity suggest both species are now increasing faster than the natural rate of population growth with immigration likely augmenting their populations. Antarctic Prions and White-headed Petrels remained extant in the presence of invasive predators, although their populations were in decline in the 1970s and had low productivity. There is little evidence of range expansion by either species, but contemporary estimates of both populations are an order of magnitude higher than the only previous island-wide estimates from the late 1970s. Current breeding productivity suggests their populations are now increasing. Our study provides quantitative evidence of population recovery and suggests pest management has achieved a short-term outcome of improving the status of nationally threatened seabird populations. However, we also find that current populations are well short of potential carrying capacity in this island ecosystem, something we may adopt as a longer-term objective of pest management.

**Authors:**

Jeremy Bird¹, Richard Fuller¹, Rachael Alderman², Justine Shaw¹

¹University of Queensland, ²Tasmanian Government

Petrel responses to invasive species eradication on Macquarie Island

**Abstract:**

Studies of seasonal migration within and between species help us to understand the drivers of this behaviour, why a diversity of strategies is observed and what might happen in the future under environmental change. Seabirds demonstrate the full range of non-breeding movement strategies from remaining fully resident to undertaking some of the longest recorded migrations. We investigated movement, behavioural time budgets and subsequent energetic costs during three winter non-breeding periods of a population of Australasian gannets (Morus serrator) breeding in southern Australia. We observed a novel strategy of facultative dispersal migration, not previously described in seabirds. In two years (2015 & 2016), gannets showed partial migration, similar to congeneric species, with some individuals travelling up to 2500 km while others remained resident. However in 2003, no individuals undertook a substantive migration and all remained close to their breeding colony throughout the winter. One consequence of this flexibility was an 8% increase in daily energy expenditure (DEE) at the population level in years with partial migration. This was driven by an increase in the time spent on water by migrating individuals, rather than an increase in the time spent in energetically costly flight. DEE for all strategies was greater during the winter than during the summer breeding period. We conclude that pressure for nesting space in their breeding colony, coupled with adequate locally available prey resources during winter means that for some individuals and in some years, migration is not advantageous or necessary. However the high DEE and observation of periodic partial migration suggests that in some years local resources are not enough to support the entire population, necessitating a dispersive migration in some individuals. Further work will investigate the nature of these localised drivers and whether this flexibility may provide resilience to environmental change.

**Authors:**

Jonathan Green¹, Norman Ratcliffe², Ashley Bunce³, John Arnould⁴

¹University of Liverpool, ²British Antarctic Survey, ³University of Queensland, ⁴Deakin University

Australasian gannets demonstrate population-level flexibility in migration strategy

**Abstract:**

New Zealand is internationally recognized as the seabird capital of the world with approximately one quarter of all seabirds breeding here, of which 10% are endemic. Within New Zealand, the Auckland Region is a hotspot for seabird biodiversity. There are 25 seabird species known to breed in this region, of which 12 (50%) are New Zealand endemic species or subspecies. These include 12 petrels and shearwaters, 1 penguin, 1 gannet, 5 shags, 3 gulls and 3 terns. However, most of these birds are 'threatened' or 'at risk', requiring urgent restoration and conservation management. This led the Auckland Council to establish the first regional government seabird monitoring and research programme, which started in late 2018. This long-term (over 10 years) programme aims to increase our knowledge on the presence, health, and trends of seabird populations in the Auckland Region and the factors affecting their population distributions and trends so as to advise and develop restoration actions to improve the conservation statuses of these species. Here we will present our approach in setting the first region-wide programme, the challenges in dealing with more than 25 species across a wide area, including inaccessible islands, the first fieldwork activities and outputs, and the exciting perspectives for the restoration of thriving seabird populations.

**Authors:**

Gaia Dell'Ariccia¹, Todd Landers¹

¹Auckland Council

The take-off of a long-term regional programme to restore seabirds: challenges, first outcomes and perspectives

**Abstract:**

Investigating how individual animals balance their energy budgets and survive full annual cycles is important for understanding interannual demography and the subsequent viability of populations. Due to the challenges associated with investigating year-round energy budgets and energy landscapes, understanding how individuals balance their energetics and avoid bottlenecks throughout the year remains poorly understood. Whilst technological advancements are increasing our knowledge of animal energy expenditure, we developed an approach to investigate how other key components of animal energy budgets, namely energy gain and storage, varied in space and time. We developed a hierarchical Bayesian state-space model that used estimates of time-activity budgets, locations, and energy expenditure, derived from biologging data, to infer year-round time series of animal energy income and reserves. Our study system was a population of common guillemots Uria aalge breeding at a western North Sea colony. These seabirds manage their energy budgets by adjusting their behaviour and accumulating fat reserves. However, large-scale mortality events, where the proximate cause of death is starvation, following birds being in energy deficit over a sustained period, can still occur during severe weather conditions. We show that guillemot energy gain varies in both time and space. Our model was also able to account for seasonality in extrinsic drivers such as sea surface temperature and daylength, allowing us to identify times and locations of high energy gain. Estimates of guillemot body mass varied throughout the annual cycle and there was evidence that birds periodically experienced losses in mass, possibly due to energetic bottlenecks, leading to increased susceptibility to mortality. Birds also tended to be lighter towards the perimeter of their spatial distribution. We describe a framework that combines biologging data, conventional time-activity budget analysis, and Bayesian state-space modelling to identify times and locations of high energetic reward or energetic bottlenecks in a wild animal population. More broadly, this approach can be extended to address pure and applied scientific questions regarding the ecology, management and conservation of populations of wild, mobile animals that have previously been impossible to answer due to logistical complexities in collecting data across full annual cycles.

**Authors:**

Ruth Dunn¹, Jonathan Green¹, Francis Daunt², Sarah Wanless², Mike Harris², Jason Matthiopoulos³, Mark Newell², Maria Bogdanova², Cat Horswill⁴

¹University of Liverpool, ²UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, ³University of Glasgow, ⁴ZSL Institute of Zoology

Modelling and mapping how common guillemots balance their energy budgets over a full annual cycle

**Abstract:**

Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and Partnerships (QPWS&P) and BirdLife Australia have been working together to identify Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) for seabirds on the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. Seabird nesting and roosting sites have been assessed using the KBA criteria developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and data collected over the last ten years by QPWS&P. Six KBAs (made up of 39 individual islands or cays) have been identified. These 39 islands and cays have been further assessed to determine if they are adequately managed and protected. Management refers to how we identify, assess and mitigate threats to seabird nesting and roosting habitat. Threats include (but are not limited to) pest plants and animals, diseases, effects of climate change (such as more frequent cyclones, erosion and overtopping) and potential disturbance within closure areas by visitors. Protection refers to statutory protection that restricts visitor access, and associated disturbance to nesting or roosting seabirds. It applies to areas above Highest Astronomical Tide (HAT), the intertidal area and the airspace above these. Recommendations are being made to increase the protection and management of any sites that were assessed as inadequate.

**Authors:**

Julie Dutoit¹, Golo Maurer², Andrew McDougall¹

¹Queensland Government, ²BirdLife Australia

Identifying and managing Key Biodiversity Areas for seabirds on the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area

**Abstract:**

Risk assessments (defined as the combination of exposure to a stressor, and sensitivity of receptor to this exposure) that are spatiotemporally explicit are important tools for conservation actions such as establishing Marine Protected Areas, and the use of this tool has increased as large scale stressor and receptor databases become available. Automatic Identification System (AIS) is an automatic tracking system for marine vessels and data collected using AIS have provided the basis for numerous studies modeling stressors related to vessel traffic, including ship-source oil pollution, vessel strike, noise pollution and disturbance. However, models based on AIS are somewhat biased because AIS does not capture all vessels and this unknown proportion of traffic varies spatially and temporally. This is particularly important for understanding disturbance, where smaller non-AIS vessel traffic likely play a major role. In this talk, we present novel methodology for assessing marine vessel traffic that is not captured by AIS in coastal waters of British Columbia (BC), Canada, using data pulled from optical imagery coupled with AIS information. Imagery was captured by the National Aerial Surveillance Program, that conducts regular patrols of the Canadian coastal regions, and by using an autonomous camera-AIS system we developed and deployed in narrow passages. With these data we plan to model spatial and temporal variability of non-AIS and AIS vessel traffic and will use this as a proxy for exposure to disturbance for Rhinoceros Auklets (RHAU) breeding along the coast of BC. However, sensitivity to vessel traffic remains largely unknown. To better understand RHAU sensitivity to marine vessel traffic, we plan to compare movement data from tagged birds in areas with low and high traffic intensities of different vessel types, as well as historic chick growth data within the Lucy Islands colony. We will discuss preliminary results in this presentation and our plans to continue this work.

**Authors:**

Kirk Hart¹, Patrick O'Hara², Mark Hipfner², Ronald Ydenberg³

¹Coast Mountain College, ²Environment and Climate Change Canada, ³Simon Fraser University

Spatial temporal modeling of marine vessel traffic and disturbance to seabirds

Progress in Establishing a New Breeding Colony of the Newell's Shearwater on the Island of Maui

**Abstract:**

Exploratory behavior represents an important way through which individuals collect information about the environment and learn its properties. Individuals may vary in the way they respond to novel stimuli, which may be due to the attributes of these stimuli. The complexity of shapes and colors are important characteristics that can influence the exploratory behavior. Here, we analyzed the exploratory behavior in the Olrog´s Gull Larus atlanticus, by examining how sex and object complexity influence object exploration. Nine adult birds (5 females, 4 males) were caught during the non-breading season in an urban area of the northern coast of Argentina. Birds were identified with leg bands and housed in outdoor aviaries. Each bird was presented with six different geometrical objects in a 15-min trial. Three simple objects had two-dimension geometric shapes without any irregularities. Three complex objects were a combination of two three-dimensional geometric elements with concavities and protruding elements. All objects were of plastic material of three different colors. All individuals approached the objects to less than 10 cm; six of them also contacted at least one object. There were no differences between sexes in the latency to approach the objects, latency at first contact and the total time of exploration (z=0.99, P=0.35; z=0.125, P=0.9; z=0.91, P=0.38; respectively). Twenty-four contact events with the objects were registered, from which 91.7% were made on complex objects, mainly the yellow and red objects. Regarding simple objects, only the yellow one was explored. This is the first study evaluating the explorative behavior of a South American Gull. We suggest that the preference of exploring the complex over the simple objects may indicate that this behavior was guided mainly by the need to extract information about the objects, and not by the potential risk associated to complexity. This first attempt to study the exploratory behavior of the Olrog´s gull is important to understand its response to the new stimuli faced in its environment.

**Authors:**

Melina Castano¹, Laura Biondi¹, Marco Favero¹, Germán García¹

¹Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras

Triaxial accelerometry allows to determine chick feeding events in a marine bird

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