-: Aloha kakou.
And welcome to our Office of National Marine Sanctuaries in
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument webinar series.
We're very excited to have you today.
We have a great presentation for you today.
And just a couple of housekeeping items
before we get started,
if you are having challenges with your audio,
on the right hand side,
there's a control panel
like with your webinar control panel.
And in there, there's a audio section,
one of the gray bars.
And you could choose,
make sure to choose what your correct output speakers are.
Sometimes it's your computer speakers
or external speakers or headphones,
that's usually where the problem arises.
Just make sure the right output is selected.
And during the presentation, if you have any issues,
please type them into the question box
and we'll do whatever we can to help you.
And also, if you do have any questions for the presenter,
you can enter those into the question box as well.
And hopefully we'll have some time at the end
to get to some of your questions.
We're welcoming participants from across the globe.
We have almost every continent represented today.
So very exciting.
But before we begin,
in Hawaiʻi, it is proper to begin with protocol,
to open the space, to learning,
to open our minds to what we're about to hear,
the presentation and information.
And in order to do that,
I will turn it over to Malia Evans
who will open it up for us.
Over to you Malia.
Malia: Mahalo, Andy.
And aloha to all of you.
Thank you for joining us today.
So I'll begin.
(Malia chanting in Hawaiian)
-: Mahalo Malia.
And so with our presentation, we work
for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries under NOAA
and we currently have 15 national marine sanctuaries
around the country,
also four proposed new national marine sanctuaries,
the most recent of which is the Hudson Canyon
off the coast of New York and New Jersey
and two marine national monuments.
So we're out here in the Pacific.
Our site is Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
We are currently a proposed national marine sanctuary,
but also a marine national monument.
And we also have our sister site also in the Pacific,
the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale
National Marine Sanctuary.
So this comprises your nation's networks of underwater parks
and is similar to the national park system but underwater.
And we are celebrating 50 years
of national marine sanctuary protections.
So we'll be half a century old this year
and we're doing celebrations around the country.
So please go to the website
and see what events might be in your area
to celebrate the achievements
of the national marine sanctuary system
in protecting your special and beautiful underwater places.
So our site, Papahānaumokuākea,
we're the world's largest fully protected area,
meaning no extraction is allowed within this area,
no commercial activities.
If we were to lay it over the United States,
it would cover an area about
from New Orleans all the way out to Las Vegas.
It covers a vast area,
582,000 square miles of ocean,
most of which is underwater.
There's only six square miles of land in that entire area,
but it's well used by millions of seabird.
Our presentation today is hosted by myself, Andy Collins.
I'm the education coordinator for Papahānaumokuākea
and work over here in Hilo
at our Mokupāpapa Discovery Center,
and Malia Evans, whom you heard before,
is O'ahu Education and Outreach coordinator,
and also Justin Umholtz,
who's our education coordinator over here in Hilo,
and also works at our Mokupāpapa Discovery Center.
And the great thing is we're finally open in June.
June 11th, we finally reopened
our Mokupāpapa Discovery Center
after two years of COVID closure.
And it's been really exciting.
We've had so many people.
We're getting about 1300 people coming in per week.
And on Saturdays,
we have a great program with a robotics partner
on the second floor.
So if you are in Hilo,
please come and visit us.
We have a wonderful 3,500 gallon saltwater aquarium,
beautiful exhibits in Hawaiian, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and English,
and just incredible artwork, and other things.
Were free Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00 to 4:00 PM.
So we hope to see you if you are in Hilo.
But across the system,
our national marine sanctuaries protect areas
for their biodiversity.
Also for the incredible shelter they provide
for many threatened and endangered species
such as this Hawaiian monk seal and green tea turtle,
enjoying a little moment there at French Frigate Shoals.
Also for the cultural heritage.
The second island in the Northwestern Hawaiian Island chain.
This is a picture from Mokumanamana.
And those are Heiau
The birds are resting on a upright part
of a ceremonial site
and there's numerous ceremonial site
covering the entire island.
So this is an incredible cultural site,
a great importance to the native Hawaiians
and for navigation and other purposes.
Also maritime heritage.
We have a lot of shipwrecks across the system.
Some of our sites are dedicated solely to shipwrecks,
the ones in the great lakes
and also the first national sanctuary, the monitor.
So we protect these.
We interpret these areas,
we document them,
and try to explain what the importance
of our maritime heritage is.
We also conduct a lot of research across the system
about the plants and animals that live in the area
and the habitats,
how they work, how they function, how they're doing,
and then monitor them
to see how things are changing over time,
especially in relation to impacts such as climate change,
which is having a significant impact
across many of our sites.
And in some cases, if we're able to,
we restore some of these sites.
And there's a huge effort in the Florida Keys right now
to outplant corals and to restore some of the coral reefs
that have been significantly damaged
or have lost habitat over the years.
We conduct a lot of education like this program
in our beautiful centers here in Hilo
and outreach events across the country.
And we do this through our volunteers
so if you are near our national marine sanctuary,
or able to volunteer,
we love our volunteers.
We'd love to have you.
If you're in Hilo,
we'd love to have you come volunteer
at our Mokupapapa Discovery Center
in talking to some of our visitors.
So we'd to love to have you come.
And again, these are special places
where we reconnect with nature,
we reconnect with ourselves and our souls,
and they're just great places to reflect
and reconnect with ourselves.
So today we have a wonderful presenter.
Her name is Rachael Orben,
and she's the assistant professor
for the department of fisheries at Oregon State University.
And Rachael is a marine ecologist
with a background in oceanography.
She's interested in how individual marine animals interact
with their environment through movement,
from flight behavior to migrations.
Rachael's research often combines biologging technology
and field techniques
for conservation and management applications.
She's the principal investigator
of the Seabird Oceanography Lab at Oregon State,
Hatfield Marine Science Center
located on the central Oregon coast.
And she studied albatrosses in Papahānaumokuākea,
The New Zealand sub Antarctic,
south Georgia, and the Falkland Islands.
She holds a PhD in ocean sciences
from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
And at this time, you can turn on your webcam, Rachael,
and I will turn mine off
and turn the presenter over to you for your talk.
-: Let's see here.
And you should see presenter.
Thank you very much, Andy and Malia,
for that wonderful welcome and introduction.
I wanted to start off my talk today
by acknowledging that where I'm speaking to you today from,
the Hatfield Marine Science Center,
we're located within the traditional homelands
of the Yaquina people.
And the Yaquina people were forcibly removed
from these coastal lands to reservations in the mid 1800s.
And today living descendants of these people are a part of
the Confederated Tribes of grand Ronde community of Oregon
and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians.
So hopefully you can hear me okay
and my slides are coming through.
Andy: Perfect. That was great.
-: Wonderful.
So today, my talk is called
tracking North Pacific albatrosses
to understand fisheries interactions.
And I'm going to start off with a question.
And I believe this links to a poll for you.
And my first question for you, the audience,
is a very simple one.
And it's have you seen an albatross?
Malia: Okay. So we have every,
oh, lots of you are responding to this poll.
And let's see what our audience.
Have any of you seen an albatross?
I'm gonna close the poll and I'll give you the results.
All right, so Rachael, we have 72% who say yes,
21%, no, and 7%, not sure.
-: Oh, that's wonderful.
Thank you.
Albatross are one of my favorite birds.
So it's really wonderful
that so many of you have had an opportunity to see one.
Let's see, I have lots of extra windows popping up.
Why are albatrosses special?
They're long-lived birds,
so if the name Wisdom might be familiar to you,
and she's Laysan albatross that is in her early 70s,
they're far ranging,
and later on in the talk,
I will show some maps
of where albatrosses are moving across the North Pacific.
They have a really slow life history.
So, albatrosses are laying one egg per year
so hatching one chick a year or less.
Some species only are nesting every other year.
They're colonial nesters
and they're very faithful to their nesting sites
and their colonies.
And there's 22 species of albatrosses globally
and 21 of these are threatened.
And I believe we have another question for you.
I was curious to know
what species of albatrosses people had seen.
And I put my top four potential species in this poll.
I wasn't allowed to list all 22 of them.
(Malia giggles)
Malia: All right,
so go ahead and register your vote there.
What species have you seen?
We've got a lot of you putting in your answers.
We'll give you a couple more seconds.
All right.
And I'm gonna close the poll.
And let's see what our audience,
what species have our audience seen.
So we've got 12% that have seen a wandering albatross,
5% have seen the northern royal albatross,
19%, the black-footed albatross,
48%, the Laysan albatross,
and 15% other species.
So Laysan albatross seems to be the winner here.
-: And that makes a lot of sense.
There's some great places in the main Hawaiian islands
where you can go and observe Laysan albatrosses.
And then black-footed albatrosses,
you can see off the US west coast.
You just have to get offshore a little bit.
And then the other two choices
were southern hemisphere birds
that you could see in New Zealand
or maybe on the way to the Antarctic.
So, a wide ranging selection.
Thank you.
So I did want to mention that most albatross species nest
in the southern hemisphere,
and these are photos taken from Campbell Island
in the New Zealand sub Antarctic.
And this is an island that has the highest diversity
of species nesting on a single island.
And in the North Pacific,
we have three albatross species.
And this is yet another quiz I have.
All my questions are front loaded in this introduction.
But I wanted to quiz you
on your North Pacific albatross identification skills.
So, each bird has a number
and then they're associated to the choices
that you're given.
So I think maybe quickly associate your numbers
and your answers
and then Malia can share the question.
Malia: Okay.
So yes, take a look at that.
'Cause I'm gonna pull the poll up right now.
So select one of the following.
-: Oh, it might not work.
Malia: Picture went away.
Yes, when I had the poll up.
And it's hard to vote when you can't see the picture.
Well, I see people are doing the best they can.
(Malia laughs)
-: I think it won't work
'cause each number needs to go with a bird.
Malia: Yes.
Okay, I'm gonna close the poll.
And I know you, folks, did your best.
28% of you voted.
(Malia laughs)
Because that could be interesting.
38%.
It was hard because there's no numbers associated with it
but I'm just gonna go ahead and put that away
so you can have your photo back.
(Malia laughs)
-: Yeah. So I'll show you the answers
so you can just follow along in your head
and see if you were correct.
So on the upper left,
we have a short-tailed albatross adult,
and the bird right below is actually
also short-tailed albatross
but its plumage is dark and it's a sub-adult bird.
Then on the right hand side,
we have the black-footed albatross in the back
and the the smallest of the three species
is the Laysan albatross in the front.
And across the North Pacific,
albatrosses have colonies typically on remote islands.
We have the short-tailed albatross nesting
in colonies near Japan
in the western portion of the North Pacific,
and then the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
has colonies of Laysan and black-footed albatrosses
on a number of islands
along the Northwestern Hawaiian Island chain.
There's also colonies of Laysan albatrosses
in the main Hawaiian islands
and off of Baja, Mexico on Guadalupe Island.
And the largest albatross colony in the world
is located on Midway Atoll,
which is really amazing.
And that's where some of the tracking data
that I'll be talking about later in the talk comes from,
where those birds are nesting.
And I wanted to share this figure early in the talk
because the North Pacific really is home to these birds
and they're crossing the North Pacific like it's nothing,
like it's a really small area,
but remember the North Pacific is a huge ocean
and albatrosses are crossing back and forth,
moving from Alaska
to colonies in the Papahānaumokuākea National Monument
and back again.
So they're really connecting all these far-ranging areas
to their colonies.
And I do have a disclaimer on this figure.
You know, we don't have tracking data
from all birds all the time from all of the colonies.
So this is still very much a biased representation
of what is actually happening out there
and how many birds are out there
in terms of what the tracks would look like
from the entire population.
(clearing throat)
Excuse me.
So, generally seabirds, including albatrosses,
have seasonal cycles of movement.
And this is really important to consider
when we think about when and where birds
might be encountering different fisheries.
So, when birds are incubating,
they'll take decently long foraging trips
away from the colony to feed themselves.
But then they have to return to that colony
to incubate their egg and relieve their partner.
Once the chick hatches and is small,
they take very short foraging trips.
Let's say an albatross might take a foraging trip
of three to five days
and this shorter duration trip inherently keeps them closer
to their nesting colony.
As the chicks get larger,
they once again are able to take these longer foraging trips
and roam farther away from their colony.
And this period of central place foraging
really constrains where they can be.
But maybe not as much as you think
with some of these albatross species.
And then finally outside of the nesting period,
birds are released
from the central-place foraging constraint
and are able to wander and forage where the prey is.
For albatrosses and other marine predators,
fisheries bycatch is a conservation issue.
And it's a very important issue
for albatross species globally.
And albatrosses are typically,
a bycatch of albatross is typically caused
by hook-and-line fisheries, so long-liners.
And birds grab baited hooks, get entangled and drown.
But vessel-based solutions can effectively minimize bycatch.
And I'll talk about those briefly in a moment.
And also the research that I'm going to be talking to
or explaining or discussing today is looking at,
is trying to provide an albatross perspective
on when and where birds are encountering boats
so that this could offer additional conservation solutions.
But, the fisheries-based solutions
or boat-based solutions are really effective,
and one of these is streamer lines,
and they work by scaring birds away
from where the long-line boats are entering the waters
so by the time the baited hooks are
in the area where the birds can access them,
they're too deep for the boats,
for the albatrosses to reach them.
And the figure on the left shows bycatch of albatrosses
and non-albatross seabirds in Alaska long-line fisheries.
And in the red box,
I've shown where streamer lines were introduced
in these fisheries.
And you can see a substantial improvement
and decrease in the number of albatrosses caught
per a thousand hooks
once streamer lines were introduced.
Another thing that can be very effective
for albatrosses in particular is that
if long lines are set at night,
albatross bycatch is reduced.
And this is because albatrosses generally
are not very active at night
and will sit on the water and be resting during this time
so they're unlikely to be flying around
and encountering fishing vessels at this point.
And this is a solution that's effective
for fisheries on the US west coast.
But when we think about the distribution of where birds are,
where albatrosses are, and where fisheries are,
it's important to realize that
just this distributional overlap does not mean
that all birds are interacting with fishing vessels.
The study that I've summarized here is
from white-capped albatrosses foraging
in the exclusive economic zone of New Zealand.
And here, Le Torres used data
from vessel monitoring systems from the vessels
and the albatross tracking data
to find that these fine-scale encounters
only incurred in 78% of albatrosses.
So some birds were bypassing boats.
And then of those birds
that did have fine-scale encounters with vessels,
they really had a varying amount of time that they spent
and foraging time that they spent associated
with that fishing vessel.
And this is where we can think of movement choices.
So, as an albatross is flying across the ocean,
there's different motivators
that influence how that bird is moving.
So, what's the weather like?
Does that bird see other albatrosses
or other animals in its environment?
Where are the prey?
Where the fishing vessels?
But also intrinsic factors.
So, is that bird hungry?
What breeding stage is it?
Currently does it have a chick
that it needs to return to the colony to feed,
or is it just foraging for itself?
And also, past knowledge of conditions
and its spatial memories.
So these birds are able to remember places
and return to places that they've been before.
So all of these,
both these intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors,
can influence how a bird is moving across the ocean
and could influence when
and where a bird approaches a fishing vessel.
So that was the question that we sought to answer
in the following project.
Is, do these intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence
when and where albatross approach fishing vessels?
And this project is the result of a number of collaborators
who collected albatross tracking data
across the North Pacific over a number of years
and really made this project possible.
I'd also like to acknowledge Le Torres's
initial light bulb moment
when she saw the Global Fishing Watch data set
and realized that this type of analysis
was really a useful way
of looking at how birds and boats were interacting.
And the reason that this was so exciting is
before Global Fishing Watch was developed,
we knew that seabirds were frequently encountering boats,
but we didn't know when and where without this boat data.
So Global Fishing Watch uses AIS data from large vessels
and collates it,
and also processes that data much in many of the same ways
that I would look at albatross tracking data
to see what behaviors is in that tracking data of vessels
so that they can identify movement types
and fishing vessel types.
And this is a close up of the data from the North Pacific.
And they really,
Oops!
This data set really offers a new
and unprecedented understanding
of where fisheries are occurring,
especially both in the exclusive economic zones
of the Pacific Island nations,
but also in the international waters.
And because albatrosses are using
all of these regions for foraging,
it's a really amazing tool to try to understand
when and where they're encountering fishing vessels.
So, we decided to use data
from these North Pacific albatross species;
the short-tailed albatross, the Laysan albatross,
and the black-footed albatross.
Short-tailed albatross do have a small population size,
and very, very occasionally are bycaught by fishing boats.
Laysan and black-footed albatross
both have increasing bycatch in US fisheries
and we really don't know what is happening
in international waters.
And using this analysis approach,
we can try to better understand these encounters
in international waters and elsewhere.
I mentioned we compiled GPS data
from collaborators across the North Pacific,
collected since 2012.
And we ended up with a data set
of Laysan albatrosses tracked during chick-rearing,
black-footed albatrosses also tracked during chick-rearing,
and short-tailed albatrosses that were fledglings,
leaving the colony on Tori-shima Island off of Japan
and traveling across the North Pacific.
So we had up to,
or approximately 341 days
of tracking data from individual short-tailed albatrosses,
but much shorter chunks of tracking data
from both the two other species.
And then we established a collaboration
with Global Fishing Watch
to obtain the high-resolution fishing effort data.
And once we had the albatross data and the fishing data,
we tried to work within a framework
where we could really understand those encounter events.
So we defined an encounter event
when the albatross was within 30 kilometers
of a fishing vessel.
And this is an estimate.
It's a metric for about where we think birds
could visually detect that vessel.
But it's not a perfect metric.
But it gives us a good rule thumb
for defining what an encounter event could be.
And then we identified association events
at the scale of three kilometers.
So when birds were within three kilometers
of a fishing vessel,
we considered this an association.
So, to illustrate this,
so this is in an example encounter.
The bird is in red and then the boat is on yellow
so they come close but they're not associated.
This is an example of an association,
but they don't behaviorally interact.
So the bird is again in red
and it goes by the boat fairly quickly.
And then finally,
we have an example of an association
where the bird does behaviorally interact.
So, the bird is now heading towards the boat
and then following along.
So we generated models to address two questions.
The first, what factors drive an encounter
between a bird and a boat
to turn into this close a three-kilometer association event.
We had data for short-tailed albatrosses
and Laysan albatrosses
but we did not have enough encounter data
for black-footed albatrosses.
And then what factors drive
how long an association event lasts.
And we only had enough association events
to run this model for the short-tailed albatrosses.
And we used a boosted regression tree modeling approach
because this is able to examine the complex relationships
that we were interested in.
And we had variables that were continuous
and also categorical.
So this modeling method can handle these types of variables.
These were the variables that we investigated.
We had bird variables.
So these intrinsic characteristics of individual birds,
what type of movement behavior they were engaged in
before an encounter occurred;
were they transiting?
Were they actively foraging?
Where they were in their foraging trip?
And this was for the breeding Laysan albatrosses
and black-footed albatrosses.
Were they on their outbound leg of their foraging trip
or were they returning home?
So we used the percent into the foraging trip for this.
How old the short-tailed albatross fledglings were,
what age they were.
And then also what colony the birds were from.
The Global Fishing Watch data provided
information about the boats.
So, what flag nation,
what gear type,
how long they were,
and then how much fishing effort was occurring in grid cell,
and also how many other boats were in that area.
And then we used satellite drive data
to characterize the environmental conditions
around each event.
And also temporal data, so daytime, nighttime, dusk.
And some larger spatial scale variables.
And for our first result,
the thing that surprised us
probably the most about this analysis was that
we found that vessel identification factors
were not significant.
So, things like flag nation and gear type didn't matter
in terms of when a bird moved from that 30 kilometers away
to approaching a boat at three kilometers.
And in hindsight, this does make sense
because potentially these birds
might need to get pretty close to a boat
to decide if it's a profitable foraging opportunity or not.
But these are such important things
in terms of albatross bycatch
but when we set out to run these models,
we didn't think that they would be important.
But we did find that a lot of the other factors
that we put into our models were important.
So this is the model output for the short-tailed albatross;
what factors change an encounter into an association event.
And we found that increased fishing effort was a factor
that made an association event more likely.
If there were not that many fishing in an area,
birds were more likely to approach them.
And this could be out of fact of sort of supply in a demand
like we can only go and visit
so many fishing boats in an area
before we might move on.
We did find that during the day,
birds were more likely to approach boats, which makes sense.
And we know that short-tailed albatrosses are more active
during the daytime
so this was good to see come up in our models.
And we found that prior behavior on the part of the bird
also influenced when they would approach vessels.
So if they were engaged in a searching behavior,
so more torturous, more turns, in their travel,
so they're looking for food,
they were more likely to approach vessels.
But if they were in a transit state,
just traveling from A to B,
they'd be more likely to bypass these vessels.
And continuing on with the short-tiled albatrosses,
we have what factors influenced
how long they would stay with a vessel.
So once they got within three kilometers,
what influenced that duration?
And again, fishing effort was important
so they would stay longer
if there were more boats in the area.
But the thing that really struck me
for the results of this model is that
some of these environmental variables were important.
So at lower wind speeds,
birds were more likely to stay with fishing vessels.
And this could be because taking off from the water
is energetically costly for these birds
so once they're on the water,
maybe there's food around,
they'll kind of stay there.
So that makes sense.
And then with increasing sea surface temperatures,
potentially less productive waters,
birds were more likely to approach vessels
and at lower primary productivity values,
birds were less likely to approach,
sorry, birds were more likely to approach vessels
at lower productivity values.
And also we did have a small effect
of younger birds being more likely to approach vessels.
For the Laysan albatrosses, we saw some similar patterns.
We saw that increased fishing effort
also made them more likely to approach vessels.
They were more likely to approach vessels
on their way home from a foraging trip,
so on their return leg,
and also when they were in a foraging state.
So, in summary, we found that Laysan albatrosses
were typically encountering long liners on the high seas.
But they were only approaching vessels 36% of the time.
Short-tailed albatrosses were approaching vessels
about 28% of the time.
And 99% of these occurred
within national exclusive economic zones,
which is good news for this species
since these are areas that have more regulation.
Black-footed albatrosses approached vessels 62% of the time.
However, we only had 21 encounters in our data set
so we did not have enough data
to investigate explanatory factors.
And we found that vessel nation and fishing type
didn't influence when birds approach boats.
So, some of the things that could be useful
in terms of fisheries management,
we did find that intrinsic bird factors matter.
So, age, behavior,
and where birds were in within their foraging trip.
We found that fishing intensity and vessel length matters,
but not fishing method or flag nation.
So, wind speed matters.
So low wind speeds lead to more interactions.
And environmental conditions explained association durations
for short-tailed albatrosses.
We found a high interaction rate
for black-footed albatrosses
and it would be really helpful to have more GPS tracks
of black-footed albatross.
And it's with that sentiment
that leads me to our current project.
And this is a continuation of the project
that I just discussed.
And again, thank you to all the co-authors
and our collaborators on this,
and the funding agencies,
the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
and the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
And our goals for this project are
to continue some of the research that we started
with the project I just summarized
and try to broaden what we can do with this type of data.
So our aim is to provide
the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
specific and useful information
on the occurrence vessel activity within the monument,
describe drivers of albatross fisheries interactions,
and assess and develop recommendations
for enhancing bycatch mitigation in the region.
So, these birds are traveling across the North Pacific,
but they do use the monument for nesting,
which really connects this place
to everywhere else in the North Pacific.
So one of the limitations to our previous study is that
the Global Fishing Watch data is incredibly useful,
but it isn't necessarily complete.
There are gaps.
So we can use our data
and characterize these albatross-vessel associations
using this database.
But this is a post-analysis process.
And really, only as good as what information
is in that database.
And sometimes ships will disable AIS to hide their activity.
Smaller vessels are not required to use AIS
and illegal, unreported or unregulated vessels
do not use AIS for concealment.
And one incredibly innovative solution to this
is using biologging devices
that have radar detection on board.
So, we're using custom-built biologging tags
that actually detect these radar signals for vessels.
So, in the picture on the left,
I've pointed to the marine radar on two tuna long liners
at the dock in Honolulu.
And radar is used for safe navigation by most vessels.
And in 2019,
we deployed a handful of tags on Laysan albatrosses
on Midway atoll
and we were able to identify
a couple encounters and interactions
between birds and boats using this technology.
And this type of tag,
it was developed by a group
working in the French Subantarctic.
And they've been working with this type of tag
for a number of years
and really trying to develop it into an operational model
where they can use the tags to provide the detections
of vessels from the backs of the albatrosses
and then actually transmit the data
to computers that are cross-referencing
the albatross detections with the AIS detections
in real time
so that it can send,
these computers can then send an alert
to fishery patrol vessels in the region.
And this is above and beyond what we're attempting to do
with our current project.
But it's a really novel solution
to the challenges of illegal fishing
in some parts of the world.
So my next slide has a lot of texts,
but these are the objectives for our current project.
And in summary,
our first objective is
to simply use the radar detecting tags
on albatrosses foraging from Midway atoll
to see if they are picking up encounters radar detections
within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument,
and then of course the adjacent high seas region.
We're planning to extend our analysis
looking at albatross encounters and associations
to hopefully include black-footed albatross,
and specifically looking at overlap
with tuna longline fleets
from November to May.
Because albatrosses tend to
be resting on the water at night,
night setting of long lines
is a really effective bycatch mitigation solution,
but it's unknown if this is actually being used
in these international fleets.
So we're planning on looking into the data
a little bit more closely
to see if night setting is occurring in these areas
and if that does help potentially albatrosses
to move past vessels during an encounter.
The next question is looking at the fishing pressure
along the protected area, the monument boundary,
and to see if there's an edge effect
that influences albatross fisheries interactions.
And then finally, with all this information,
we're hopeful that we can propose some unique solutions
that could influence management decisions
or offer a different perspective
on ways that albatross bycatch could be avoided.
This is a slide that shows detection to association models
that we used in the previous work.
But in this case, we're integrating the radar detections
from the biologging tags.
And we'll use the same framework
to hopefully extend this to the black-footed albatrosses.
And this is a slide
that shows the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
with six months of fishing,
from October, 2019 to May, 2020, surrounding the monument
and you can really see the boundary of the protected area.
So the fishing is in the white dots
and the monument is the place where there are no white dots.
But from this view,
you can't tell if there really is a higher density
of fishing right along the edge
or if it's pretty much marginate actually
as you move away from the monument.
So, we will be asking two questions.
The first, is the density higher along this boundary,
and then if that's the case,
does this influence
where albatrosses are encountering boats?
And this could be especially important
for Laysan albatrosses
if they continue the pattern of approaching vessels
on their homeward leg.
Potentially they could be approaching vessels
right along this monument boundary.
So we did have our first field season on Midway
in January, 2022.
And on the left, we have the tags themselves.
So, these are the radar detecting tags,
and we attach them to the back of albatrosses
using a special waterproof tape
that is very good at attaching things to feathers
but also very easy to take off.
And we had about two weeks of field work there this year.
This brings me to my final question.
I'll first look at some of the data
that we collected this year.
And my final question for you, the audience,
is how many fishing vessels do you think
a Laysan albatross departing from Midway atoll
might encounter on a foraging trip?
Malia: Okay, so I'm gonna launch that poll.
And here are your choices.
Zero to three,
four to 10,
10 to 20,
or 21 to 50.
So go ahead and register your vote.
How many fishing vessels do you think
a Laysan albatross departing from Midway atoll
might encounter on a foraging trip?
All right, about 60% have voted.
I'm gonna close the poll in a few seconds.
And let's see what the results are.
Okay, Rachael, here is our result.
So, 7% thought zero to three,
27% of the audience, it was four to 10,
39% thought 10 to 20,
and 27% thought 21 to 50,
so what is the correct answer?
-: So, in our data,
the number that I've come up so far
for the Laysan albatross is
about one encounter per foraging trip.
And this is still an estimation
so I'm looking at the radar detections across the trip.
And so, I don't know if in some cases,
maybe those radar detections would be related
to multiple boats associated with a single detection.
In some cases,
the radar detections might be from other vessels
that are not actually fishing vessels.
But the correct answer is zero to, I think I had three.
So it's probably closer to less than one.
Here's the map of the data sets.
And the red dots are the radar detections.
So, it's still,
even though fishing is a problem for these individual birds
on an individual level,
it's still a really big ocean out there
and an individual bird might only encounter one
or less than one fishing vessel on an entire foraging trip,
an entire trip across the North Pacific.
Some of these birds are not even encountering a single boat.
And this is one of the reasons why we struggled
to gain enough data from black-footed albatrosses
'cause individual birds are not encountering enough boats
to give us that higher sample size.
So we did have a few radar detections
within the monument waters.
And we still need to cross reference these
with the AIS data.
And we can also calculate basically the mileage
and the area of surveillance
that was accomplished by our tagged albatrosses.
So some next steps and conclusions.
We have a lot more to do.
We have more field data to collect in January, 2023.
Data analysis and cross reference
with the Global Fishing Watch data set.
And we think that La Nina conditions are likely
to continue through 2023
so we are expecting the tracks of the albatrosses
to be very similar,
the Laysans ranging
from the fisheries extension off of Japan,
and then the black-footed albatrosses heading east.
But then in conclusion,
I hope that I've convinced you
that the albatross perspective is an important component
of understanding how albatross fisheries interactions change
and can offer some additional perspective
and information for managers.
So with that,
I'd like to say mahalo to our funders, supporters,
and all of the collaborators
who have made this work possible.
Justin: Great.
Thank you, Dr. Orben.
Is it okay to ask a couple questions?
-: Yes.
Justin: All right. So, this one just came in
and it actually is a really good big picture one.
For North Pacific albatross species,
how would you rank fisheries-related mortality of albatross
in terms of its impacts on those albatross populations
relative to other threats they face
like plastics, climate change,
invasive species on breeding sites, et cetera?
-: I feel like I need a model for this one
to really get into the nuts and bolts.
It depends on the short term and the long term.
I think on the short term,
fisheries interactions are very important
for black-footed albatross populations.
At the moment,
the short-tailed albatross populations are small
but are growing at about 7% a year.
So they're doing pretty well.
But of course, the big colonies in the North Pacific,
the Laysan albatross colonies on Midway,
and the black-footed albatross colonies
on all the small, low-lying atolls within the monument
are very much in danger to sea level rise.
So, over the medium to longer term,
that's a very important threat to consider.
Justin: Great. Thank you.
I know that's a really big question.
Andy, I think I probably should hand it over to you
or do we have time for one more?
Andy: We can do one more.
Justin: All right.
Well, you talked about,
there was another couple questions on global climate change.
How about,
I have observed an encounter turn into an association
in the South Atlantic
in the case of an old-school atoll ship
as the wind pattern around the sails
created lift for the albatross,
the synchronized flying of the pair was amazing.
Can you speak to how the pair know
how each other synchronize their flight?
Is that something sort of within your realm of knowledge?
-: Oh!
Well, seabirds and albatrosses are very visual.
So, vision is an important component
of how they're able to do that.
The city albatrosses have an incredibly beautiful display
where the pair do fly in sync around the colony,
and I've seen them do it at sea as well.
And they're incredibly good at it.
But I don't know exactly how they do it.
They must be watching each other.
Justin: Thank you.
And there are a few other questions.
I think we're gonna have to email them
because we are out of time
but we will be sending those out to everyone registered
once we have a chance to get those.
-: Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Orben.
That was a really great talk.
I learned a lot.
And, hold on, there we go.
Yeah, so mahalo for making time for us
and for answering some of those questions.
I really appreciate having you and this partnership
with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
for funding a lot of the research,
this amazing research
that's been going on Papahānaumokuākea.
So mahalo.
And just for this webinar is being recorded,
and so we will have it up on the sanctuary's site.
The webinar's site, the link is right there
within about 10 days.
We have to transcribe it,
so it takes a little time to get it up there.
You will also receive a certificate of attendance
for this presentation
for one hour of professional development.
You should have that in your email by tomorrow, probably.
And just so we have some great upcoming webinars.
So our next one, our monthly webinar for August,
is by Kilo Gonzalez,
who has been doing some research up on Lalo,
looking for developing a resilient strategy
for French Frigate Shoals Atoll Lalo.
So he's going to talk about that
and some of the challenges of working at that site
and some of the recent military,
there was military development on that site,
some dilapidated infrastructure that traps animals
and other things
and some impacts from recent storms.
So he's going to talk about that next month
and you'll see something in your email soon
advertising that talk.
And also we have our
Get Into Your Sanctuary Day event coming up.
If you are on O'ahu,
we have a really cool event on August 6th
at a Beach Cleanup and Marine Debris Art Show
out on the west side, out at Ma'ili Beach Park.
And so we hope you can join us.
The link in the bottom there is
how you can just go to a website.
You can register to come to that event.
So we really do hope to see you there for that
and other Get Into Your Sanctuary Day events
around the country
as it's one of our signature events
for the National Marine Sanctuary system.
And also we continue to have our exploration partner,
the Nautilus Ocean Exploration Trust,
active in Papahānaumokuākea.
They're doing some really innovative mapping right now
in the southeast portion of Papahānaumokuākea.
But we also do some deep sea dives.
You could follow along live.
So check out nautiluslive.org
over the coming several months
and we're gonna have some live engagements on there.
And you can also,
if you have a classroom,
you could register for a live ship to shore event
with the Nautilus.
We've been doing those in English
and in Olelo Hawaii recently.
So it's really great partnership with that group.
And lastly, please make sure to fill out your survey.
We do wanna hear from you
and other things that we can improve upon
or topics that you'd like us to cover.
And again, any of the questions we didn't get to
we'll be sending to Dr. Orben
and we'll have her answer those
and get those back out to you.
So, mahalo for joining us
and we hope to see you next month.
Be safe, take care.
Aloha.