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Islands.• Release of the National Plan of Action to reduce longlinefishing impacts on seabirds.The GPS logger attached to the back of this penguin will providevaluable information on its foraging activity. Photo: Peter Ryan.from the study colonies of giant petrels.Papers on seabird conservation and status arising from postdoctoralfellow Richard Cuthbert’s year on Gough Island arenow starting to appear in the literature. Many of his findingssuggest that populations at Gough Island are underconsiderable threat, prompting the Royal Society for theProtection of Birds to invest in a three-year researchprogramme on the conservation of Gough’s seabirds. RossWanless and Andrea Angel, both past MSc graduates from theFitztitute, head off to Gough Island for a year in September2003 to assess the direct impacts of introduced mice on thebreeding success of key species of conservation concern, andto determine the possible role of disease in depressing thebreeding performance of seabirds on the island. During thisproject we shall also deploy GLS loggers on all three albatrossspecies breeding on Gough Island to track their movementsover a 1-2 year period, including the critical non-breedingranges.In terms of more academic research, the work on theforaging ecology of Cape Gannets initiated by David Grémilletin 2001/02 gathered momentum in 2002/03. David returnedwith GPS-logger fundi Giacomo Dell’omo and obtained morethan 100 foraging tracks for gannets from Malgas Island andLambert’s Bay. These confirmed the very limited spatialoverlap between birds from these colonies, and laid thefoundation for an even more ambitious field season in 2003/04.David also arranged for prototype GPS loggers for penguins,developed by Dr Gerrit Peters in Germany, to be madeavailable for initial testing on African Penguins. SamanthaPetersen, assisted by recently-graduated CB student Marta dePonte, obtained foraging tracks for 35 penguins from Boulders,Robben and Dassen Island.Highlights• First use of GPS loggers to measure foraging activity inany penguin.• A special issue of African Journal of Marine Sciencesummarising seabird research at the Prince EdwardStudentsMichael Mills (MSc Conservation Biology); Pair-bonddisruptions and demographic bias associated with long-linefishing mortality: an individual-based model for assessingconsequences for Wandering Albatross populationsSamantha Petersen (UCT Zoology Honours); Comparativeforaging ecology of African Penguins from three coloniesinferred using GPS data loggers; and Demography andfidelity among giant petrels Macronectes giganteus and M.halli at Marion IslandMareile Techow (MSc, co-supervisor Dr Colleen O’Ryan,Molecular and Cell Biology, UCT); Using molecular tools toidentify population-specific markers for White-chinned PetrelsLecturesAn overview of longline fishing impacts off South Africa waspresented at the IOC in Beijing, in August 2002. Results of thegannet foraging study were presented by David Grémillet atconferences on remote sensing in Tokyo, Japan in November2002 and the International Symposium on Bio-LoggingScience, in Tokyo in March 2003.VisitorsDrs David Gremillet and Giacomo Dell’omo visited Cape Townin Dec-Jan 2002/03 to continue to study the fine-scale foragingbehaviour of Cape Gannets using the latest in miniaturiseddata-loggers. Dr Geoff Hilton visited Cape Town in May 2003to plan the three-year study on seabirds at Gough Island.AcknowledgementsSeabird research in the Southern Ocean is supportedlogistically by the Directorate: Antarctica and Islands,Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. TheNPOA was written with the support of a grant to JohnCooper from Marine and Coastal Management. Ongoingseabird monitoring at Marion Island is supported by grantsto Dr Rob Crawford from the Department of EnvironmentalAffairs and Tourism. Bird research on Gough Island isfunded by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,together with a grant by the British Ecological Society toRichard Cuthbert. Studies on the foraging ecology of CapeGannets were initiated as part of a collaborative NRF-French programme but are now supported by the CNRSand a grant from the British Ecological Society to SueLewis. Colleagues both at the university and in the field arethanked for their assistance, especially Erica Sommer forstruggling so hard to obtain blood samples from WhitechinnedPetrels at the Antipodes Islands. This programmeis a truly collaborative effort.18 Percy FitzPatrick Institute Annual Report: July 2002 - June 2003