Mrs Macronectes

The call came in to ASR South Coast at 4:30pm on 25/06/2013 from Trish of Potato Point. Peter took the call and rescued the unidentified seabird that was large and grey and was definitely not a cormorant. Peter soon worked out after a call to Betty and Lindsay that it was a Southern Giant Petrel (Macronectes giganteus) listed as endangered under the EPBC Act and under State legislation.

The next day she was expertly couriered down to me (Penny) in Bermagui

with a parting gift of 750g of chuck steak from Peter. A couple of more

phone calls later to Lindsay it was confirmed she was a first year female

fledgling that was exhausted and slightly underweight. Whilst in care she

ate, 2.3kg of steak, 250g octopus, 200g prawn, 3kg of pilchard, a HUGE

appetite! She was also very assertive around food by displaying her wings

with her head down all whilst walking towards me gurgling a petrel

noise.

"Mrs Macronectes" the Southern Giant Petrel in the care of Penny at Bermagui.

She was released 4 days later 3km offshore from Bermagui by a lovely

commercial fisherman on a gorgeous sunny Sunday morning. She was a little

dumbfounded when her webbed feet hit the water and perhaps a little bit

surprised and really quite unhappy about been handled again by those funny

smelling humans! It was a privilege and an honour to care for such an

amazing pelagic species. We also managed to see many other amazing

seabirds whilst out including loads of Australian Gannets.

The global population of M.giganteus is believed to be 62,000 with 31,300

breeding pairs with an estimated population decrease of 20% over the last

60 years and is continuing to be in rapid decline. There are believed to

be 7,090 breeding pairs in Australian territories and only breed on sub

Antarctic or Antarctic Islands such as Macquarie Island 1300km south of

Tasmania.

Once they have fledged (after approximately 60 days incubation and 115

days to reach their fledged weight) they disperse and do not land on land

until they reach sexual maturity approximately 6-7 years of age.

They are opportunistic predators with a preference for penguin carcasses,

with 82% of their diet consisting of birds, 4.7% penguins and the

remainder crustaceans, euphausiids, fish, cephalopods and mammals. They

locate food by smell and are known to hunt day or night particularly when

they have chicks to feed. Their biggest threat is from long line fishing

as by-catch when lines are set or ingesting hooks that are discarded,

fisherman, petrels and albatross are found around aggregations of food

such as krill and will therefore always interact with each other.

She was a beautiful and amazing petrel who clearly thought she was much

higher on the hierarchy than me even though I was taller!

Penny 

Penny releasing Mrs Macronectes 3km offshore of Bermagui