you
at the end of an assignment like this
albatross project I know as much as
anybody about it and so I’m not just a
photographer I become the storytelling
and yet I become an ambassador for
albatrosses
it’s a pleasure to be back here and this
is a big night for the big birds
you can’t talk about albatrosses we’re
not talking about the legend so let’s
get that legend out of the way because
it’s really more about what we assume
about the birds then what is real about
the bird most people associate the
albatross had something burdensome and
awkward and of course it all goes back
to Coleridge is famous poem about the
Ancient Mariner
the sailors punished because he kills an
albatross and he has to wear the corpse
around his neck
Coleridge never saw an albatross but he
was inspired by the legends about this
bird for centuries sailors had been
wondering about them some of them
assumed that they were the souls of
drowned sailors others thought that they
were the bringers of wind but nobody
could explain what a flew like they did
effortlessly cruising behind ships for
days sometimes weeks on end without
hardly flapping a wing we’ve come a long
way since but what has not changed is
that sense of all that virtually anyone
feels and they come eye to eye with one
of these amazing Birds the American
biologist Robert Cushman Murphy once
compared to his first great albatross at
sea with lifetime experiences like
seeing his first giant sequoia tree in
California gazing down into the Grand
Canyon he said
expectation sank into nothingness
albatrosses are birds of superlatives
they fly like their stunt pilots
inhabiting their own bodies and they’re
made to exploit the wind they spend most
of their long lives in the air and the
data that scientists have accumulated in
the last two decades are truly
astonishing they’ve run farther than any
other creature on the planet one Laysan
albatross like this one traveled 15,000
miles in a month and at the end of a 50
year lifespan the average for most
albatrosses an ordinary bird may have
covered more than three million miles
when it comes to frequent flyer miles
they must be in a class by themselves
but there’s another dimension to these
birds and they touch down on the remote
specks of land where they reproduce they
become different birds with intricate
social lives that stand in great
contrast to their solitary existence on
the open oceans and then there’s their
lives at sea and those are still the
least known of all even with all the
advances in modern science and sensing
technologies of the last two decades
most of the knowledge we have about
albatross is still circumstantial and
indirect and an image like this one that
a wandering albatross of New Zealand is
pretty rare and hard to get I was
intrigued by the notion that these
albatross is after all have to live on
the sea surface like any other sea bird
and I ended up experimenting that this
perspective by deploying an underwater
camera mounted on a pole and manoeuvring
it close to a bird
some facts albatross is actually in
aggregate you know there are 21 or 24
species of different kinds of albatross
is depending on who you talk to the
taxonomy is still a source of discussion
among scientists but they’re all
different and they range from elegant
gray heads like this one breathing on
the northern tip of South Georgia to
Fuller’s albatrosses that really look
out of place nesting on the tree
canopies in an island south of New
Zealand and even though albatross is
need wind they have managed to get along
with the doldrums and found a way to
establish a home base near the equator
these are waved albatross escorting on
barren lava rock in the Galapagos
Islands and courtship is another reason
why people express superlatives and it
comes to albatrosses
I mean I’m wandering albatross Mail
spreads these glorious wings in front of
a female it is truly an amazing sight
but she seems to express that it’s no
big deal
I was there I guess at the right time
this is where I camped the image is made
on albatross island truly a hallowed
place to me because this is very Robert
Cushman Murphy had made his original
observations 80 years earlier in the
beginning part of the 20th century and
even though it looks pretty rough and I
wasn’t looking too happy I was elated to
be there who is a true privilege and
this is the yacht that took me around
South Georgia that memorable summer most
albatrosses occur in the storm zone that
girdles the earth in the southern
hemisphere sailors know them as the
roaring 40s the furious 50s summer down
the air can feel like winter here snow
squall in a black brow colony makes
these birds hunker down while they’re
incubating their eggs albatrosses need
wind albatrosses and wind are
inseparable they do not fly like any
other earth instead of expending their
own energy by flapping wings they tap
the winds energy in a superb and
sophisticated manner the glide load of
the ocean to take advantage of wind
bouncing off waves and exploiting wind
gradients as they change from right
above the water to sixty feet above the
surface and here to make it come alive
is a short video clip by Chris that show
how to fly numbers undulations
rising up into the wind and then using
gravity to make forward progress this is
a royal albatross and here’s a smaller
black-browed albatross wholesale off
museum
now if that clip made you seasick you’re
not the only one it’s really hard the
photograph albatross is in flight on the
open ocean I’m sure it’s a little easier
things become a bit more predictable and
I don’t have to worry about my stomach
too much this is a black-footed
albatross flying in light winds over
French frigate Shoals in the leeward
islands of Hawaii you can see the wings
are fully stretched and even drooping at
the wingtip like a b-52 I only breathe
break that streamline and I have to come
in for a landing
they stand up use their feet as brakes
and they become ordinary birds on shore
but in the air they’re a symphony and
the more extreme the wind conditions are
the more albatross has come into their
own this is a royal albatross it
measures nearly eleven feet from wingtip
to wingtip they can bend themselves in
two sickles slicing through the air at
fifty miles an hour or more this image
reminds me of a line in Carl Safinaz
text for the geographic an albatross he
wrote is its own Todd longbow and the
breeze is its bowstring they’ve mastered
the art of staying in motion without
practically expending any energy
metabolic studies have shown that an
albatross in flight spends barely more
energy than an albatross sitting on the
ground doing absolutely nothing and when
a force
in Gale off the Falklands with the ocean
surface into froth these black-browed
albatross s were actually able to make
forward progress into that storm wind
they’re so comfortable in the air
there’s so much in control of their own
lives that if it weren’t for a need to
breathe I would never come back on shore
but they do have to there is that urge
young albatross is once they fledge
spend four five six years before they
come back and touch solid ground again
but when they do when they come back
that first summer they appear reluctant
to come down from the air and young
birds like these may cruise for hours on
end gliding back and forth above the
colony and I can imagine how
intimidating it might be when you’ve
been out there over the ocean as a
solitary bird and you’re confronted with
a sea bird sitting where do you land it
usually starts on the edges albatrosses
have little fear for humans because they
only come ashore on these remote islands
but still if I want to get into their
world I have to make myself small and
wait until the birds forget I’m there
and then when they go back to their own
lives I can show them as individuals as
partners and members of a collective
courtship in albatrosses is a highly
stylized ritual black brown male capes
at a female they fins with a bill
side-by-side they bow to one another
a female can indicate a willingness by
laying her head back to which a male can
respond by twisting his neck upside down
as he grooms his partner it all looks
very intimate and serene
but there’s another dimension to this
let me share with you this clip privacy
is hard to find in another crossbone
this is a mixed reading colony of grey
hats and black brows on the northern
Campbell I own
youngest youngsters perched on the
pedestals most of these islands are
really remote and hard to get to use a
pile of our gear mix at that of a BBC TV
crew on carcass island at the western
end of the Falkland Islands this is
going ashore on steeple Jason where we
landed with special permission from the
Wildlife Conservation Society which
after the island was bought by a
philanthropist handed over the title to
WCS and now the islands are protected
for the first time in their history and
we spend a memorable week assured at
earth Carl carrying gear sure but
onwards to another part of the Southern
Ocean Campbell Island 400 miles south of
New Zealand
here’s Christine after we made a long
and arduous hike to find Sudi
albatrosses this is a really interesting
species member of the Albatross family
it’s hard to pick favorites but many of
the specialists when you ask them they
will admit to a weak spot for these
light bland mantled sudhi albatrosses
which are cliff nesters they nest in
solitary fashion instead of aggregating
in large numbers here’s a close-up of
one of them and here’s an image of a
Sudi albatross in flight different kind
of flight pattern different kind of
outline but like mental sudhi
albatrosses wasn’t the only reason leave
it here we were there for the truly big
birds but getting around wasn’t the
easiest things we are after all in a
furious 50s
this is a force 11 gale weather forecast
learned that goods but we had only one
chance at crossing the islands so we did
we were knocked over multiple times
that’s a hot footed hike we took and
that’s Carl commenting on the condition
of his feet after an eight-hour hike
across Campbell Island this is a little
bit walk made to shelter two biologist
but it ended up being home sweet home to
the four of us you have to choose your
companions carefully on these kind of
trips Carl on the Left Peter more next
to him and Christian myself they’re
truly giants they’re even a little bit
bigger than the legendary wandering
albatross 2025 pounds 11 foot wingspan
in our day glorious they made for life
some royal albatrosses are known to have
lived for 70 years so a pair met bond
forms can stay together for 50 years
reproducing one chick every other year
so it’s important that you choose the
right partner and that is one reason for
this extended courtship that may spend
two years spending time together is
important here’s a little video clip in
one of these intimate moments in the
lives of two birds about to become
partners
but it doesn’t always go right
during our survey of Royals on Campbell
we came upon this nest with an abandoned
egg something must have gone wrong
one partner didn’t come back to the
other one that was incubating an egg and
after a while it could be several weeks
because they’re really faithful to one
another and to that precious egg after
several weeks and the other didn’t show
up that bird had to go save itself we
don’t know what happened but what we do
know that the natural mortality of
paired royal albatros is in their adult
lives is extremely low maybe one to two
percent per year so this could be one of
these instances where mortality was
induced by fishing practices and that of
course is the edge of this story that
I’m sharing with you tonight but let’s
talk about how it starts let’s talk
about how this pair bomb begins after
these birds spend years at sea they do
come back to the place where they’re
born not just the island but even the
neighborhood where they grew up
one bird on the ground soliciting the
company of others in there they land and
then they get together these are
teenagers they try out moves on one
another they know the moves by instinct
but that is not enough they have to
learn how to perform the right moves in
the right sequence in front of other
birds that are also not so sure about
themselves so teenagers at them all
these are called gams lose social
affiliations that may last for half an
hour and then the birds break up and
they fly off again and then another
aggregation they form an hour later in
another place and so it goes and
gradually they learn how to do it and
gradually I learned how to do my job I
know what they’re going to do so my job
is to be on the
referee and to be right behind them
because I know sooner or later one of
these Royals will unfold those glorious
wings and then I’m looking into their
world from my perspective
now you may think this is humorous but
in this serious business to these birds
halfway around the world once again now
we’re in the northern hemisphere
we’re in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of
thousands of evidences gather on the
beaches of subtropical
it’s a very unusual place tour now the
trust to call him when you’re there a
place on all the process in Black Sea
here are the black sheet albatrosses
they prefer the open beach and their
courtship has evolved in another
direction it’s more energetic and their
moves are even more extravagant now as I
mentioned earlier these birds know that
courtship repertoire by instinct
instinct is a term we use and we really
don’t know what these animals are doing
it really is a way to cover up our own
ignorance but those courtship moves
don’t mean anything until the birds
internalize how to do it and perform the
moves in the right sequence in front of
the right partner and to do it with
vigor as Duke Ellington once said it
don’t mean a thing until it got that
swing
so the culminating moment in a courtship
of these black feet is in both of them
stand up on tiptoes and they do it in
synchrony and they both lay their bills
against each other that is when things
may be getting seriously evolving
towards a partnership no matter whether
it’s one species or the other ultimately
courtship results in prospective
partners spending time together at a
nest site that a male has already
claimed but then of course it’s her
choice whether he’s the right guy and
whether it’s the right spot and then
parenting leads to one chick born after
an incubation that can take anywhere
from one to more than two months
and that chick is fed through
regurgitated oil from an upper stomach
albatrosses have two stomachs in the
upper stomach they digest their food the
oil floats to the surface fish and squid
are rendered into oil water protein and
fat and the oil is regurgitated
into the mouths and into the stomach’s
of these chicks and a happy albatross
chick is a chick with a lot of oil in
its belly they don’t get fed too often
initially maybe every couple of days and
then later on the intervals may lengthen
to one to two weeks if you’re a black
brown albatross chick you may be born on
top of a mud pedestal up to three feet
tall truly amazing structures that
parents keep adding on to year after
year and it’s extraordinary to
contemplate that these birds which fly
across ocean basins and make their way
without trouble back to that nest site
will not recognize their own egg if it
falls out of that mud pedestal their own
nest it just becomes an object that
means nothing to them but when it’s
inside that nest scrape it’s an object
to Beach other cherished
they EQ bait it and then when a chick
begins to pick at the surface of the
shell he begins to call out and the
parent begins to respond the bond
between parent and chick is established
before that chick is even emerging
chicks like this one a lay some crawling
out of the egg on turn Island in the
French frigate Shoals were born in
january/february and they’re dependent
on their parents for up to half a year
first couple of weeks parents alternate
pruden because there are predators
aerial predators to contend with here on
Campbell Island her gray head is warding
off a school flying overhead
here’s another school think of him as
gulls on steroids hook beaks clawed feet
and this one was thinking nothing of
assaulting a fully-grown wandering
albatross that was blundering into its
territory other enemies crested Caracara
also known as Johnny rooks
in the Falkland Islands patrolling the
edges of a huge albatross colony on
Beauchene at the southern edge of the
Falklands and here’s a group of
caracaras tearing apart at appleís
albatross juvenile so the fence comes
from being big and being tall and being
able to squirt that oil back to any one
who dares to come close so I stay upwind
taking a closer look truly endearing at
this stage of fuzzy chick this one is
maybe a month old but underneath a real
bird is growing but it takes a while it
takes months of shuttling in food from
the far reaches of an ocean basin to
make an albatross chick grow into a real
bird and then towards the end
there’s some humorous moments in a
matter of a few week every hairstyle
that’s been tried out in human society
is sported on top of would be
albatrosses from baroque to rockabilly
from Punk to crew-cut but no matter
which fashion you adopt and your Laysan
albatross you have to head to the beach
that’s where they all gather in the
early summer and that’s what I begin to
try out how to get into the air it’s
astonishing again to contemplate that
these amazing effortless fliers have to
learn how to fly their parents aren’t
there to teach them they have to figure
it out for themselves and they have no
clue about it other than this urge how
to run down the beach and get into the
air but coordination between feet and
wings is not always the best thing but
they keep trying they have so much
energy and they have to in a matter of a
few weeks learn how to do it or would I
die the naivete that is bird standing
there on the shoreline gathering by the
thousands by the tens of thousands there
are over a million albatross is in the
leeward islands of Hawaii and every
summer it’s a trial by fire but his lei
sounds and these Blackfeet albatrosses
the year when we were there Midway Atoll
last summer the winds were light and
many of these birds ended up paddling
out onto the lagoon and that is where
they were readying themselves for that
final flight that had taken out of the
sheltered waters
into the open blue ocean here’s one bird
interesting the notes that just before
the parents leave them they pump a last
meal into their stomachs these birds
have a little bit of a fat reserve but
it also makes them a little bit heavier
than the ideally need to be in order to
take flight
so here’s that video clip the interior
of Midway Atoll thousands and thousands
of young birds and here’s one heading to
the beach seeing the ocean for the first
time
though not so certain about things not
so good on its feet yet but he’s not the
only one
but not everybody makes it
there’s heavy mortality in the middle of
summer many birds get into the water
before they’re ready to go they haven’t
learned how to waterproof themselves yet
preening using that oil gland at the
base of their tail and they get
waterlogged some of them take by taken
by sharks many of them sink you’re not
seen again some of them are able to make
it back to the beach the lucky ones may
get a second chance but for many there
is no recourse it’s truly hard wrenching
to watch but there’s nothing you can do
it’s all part of nature and in seabird
colonies you see everything turn Island
in that chain of islands that stretches
from Hawaii halfway towards Japan turn
island is a speck of land that is where
we went along with two researchers from
the University of California at Santa
Cruz truly heaven on earth if you want
to study albatrosses low tech tools
little plastic bucket in which she
weighs chicks but it’s high-tech science
this is an instrument that has
revolutionized our understanding of
albatrosses it’s a sensor that can plot
what a bird’s arm can accumulate other
data oceanographic data and beam the
information up to a satellite overhead
signal is beamed down to a server in
France
researchers can log on to it in almost
in real time they can see what the birds
are doing but they’re up to this is
Scott one of the people with whom we’ve
worked here he is applying one of these
transmitters gluing it on to the back of
an albatross the package weighs only a
few grams and it really doesn’t bother
the birds at all this is an image made
using my laptop set up on the beach in
front of an S
thing albatross and this is the pathway
of a single albatross starting and
ending up back on turn island these
birds are amazing but they are also
becoming biological sensors for us
because we can follow them through these
amazing instruments and they gather data
for us not just about what they’re doing
but ever that is happening on the open
ocean Midway of course there’s a theater
of war during World War two
things have calmed down on the ground
the islands are protected but on the
open ocean in the Central Pacific it’s
still an area of conflict between all
the trusses in US this is just one small
pile of junk that the US Fish and
Wildlife Service had to collect from
Midway lagoon which is just in Maynooth
part of the Central Pacific there’s a
lot of stuff out there there’s a gyre in
the Central Pacific or stuff accumulates
all this junk
plastic objects rubber objects that
float on the surface of the ocean some
of the objects I collected on Midway and
put out in front of an incubating
albatross toothbrushes cigarette
lighters GI Joes you name it they find
it and because it tastes just like squid
they swallow it take it back to their
chicks which died by the thousands from
indigestion you see the corpses a
plastic and rubber inside this young one
was lucky because the parent
regurgitated a bottle cap on the ground
instead of into a challenge to a chick’s
stomach
of course the problems not confined to
the Central Pacific here’s a long roll
of plastic that had been regurgitated by
a wandering albatross on South Georgia
if it had ended up in a bird stomach
where it would have unfolded of course
it would have caused mortality we do
know what is happening out there there
are enough observers on sea of Ferenc
fishing boats accumulating data that we
know but a fishing boats go and what
they’re doing and we also know where the
albatross has go and it’s no surprise
that they both end up going to the same
areas where fish and squid are abundant
the albatross is accumulate behind these
fishing boats because the fishing is
easy there they grab onto the bait that
is extended out from these fishing
vessels in the case of a long liner it
can be 80 miles of baited hooks and
because the wandering albatross is our
the biggest and the brashest of them all
they end up near the baited hooks they
out-compete the others and that’s
probably one reason why this suffer
disproportionately from this problem
they drown nigel is an Australian
seabird biologist who first started
studying the problem of the sea bird
bycatch in the late 1980s and here he is
on a fishing boat off Hawaii talking
with fishermen which have adopted
another one of these easy solutions
instead of running out the bait from the
stern of a boat running it out from the
site and again you can see these very
simple devices that are dangling there
that have reduced the mortality by more
than 90%
olam the birds are pretty safe now most
of the significant colonies have
protected status this is one of these
extraordinary places in the Falkland
Islands an island called Beauchesne just
south of the main Falkland Islands or I
had the great privilege to camp for a
week
wall-to-wall birds his colony extends
for two and a half miles but it’s out at
sea that the problems no occur and
ironically it’s the bird of legend the
wandering albatross that seems to be at
the highest risk right now when I first
went to South George in the late 1980s
more than a thousand breeding pairs of
this amazing snowy white race occurred
here the population has plummeted a
fewer than half of them now and you fix
if you extend that line there’s only one
end point and that is extinction but it
doesn’t have to happen
melville once wrote in the course of
Moby Dick when he was trying to
articulate the majesty of albatrosses he
wrote is it conceivable that such an
utterly majestic creature is utterly
unknown to me and assure that was them
we have no excuse anymore not to know
about these birds and not to care about
them beyond the science beyond the
conservation a personal note what these
birds mean to me my mission is to bring
animals to people and to show them as
dignified beings or maybe very different
from ourselves but they lead parallel
lives and there are resemblances as I
hope I’ve shared with you this evening
these amazing achievements these birds
is individuals and their partnerships
lifelong bonds
but even beyond that personal note and
this is the last comment I would like to
make these birds mean more than just
inspiring all in just individually they
are ambassadors for complete consistence
there are vital signs of wild roses that
even little man but as long as they’re
there
because they’re flying numbers
something must be right with the world
you
at the end of an assignment like this
albatross project I know as much as
anybody about it and so I’m not just a
photographer I become the storytelling
and yet I become an ambassador for
albatrosses
it’s a pleasure to be back here and this
is a big night for the big birds
you can’t talk about albatrosses we’re
not talking about the legend so let’s
get that legend out of the way because
it’s really more about what we assume
about the birds then what is real about
the bird most people associate the
albatross had something burdensome and
awkward and of course it all goes back
to Coleridge is famous poem about the
Ancient Mariner
the sailors punished because he kills an
albatross and he has to wear the corpse
around his neck
Coleridge never saw an albatross but he
was inspired by the legends about this
bird for centuries sailors had been
wondering about them some of them
assumed that they were the souls of
drowned sailors others thought that they
were the bringers of wind but nobody
could explain what a flew like they did
effortlessly cruising behind ships for
days sometimes weeks on end without
hardly flapping a wing we’ve come a long
way since but what has not changed is
that sense of all that virtually anyone
feels and they come eye to eye with one
of these amazing Birds the American
biologist Robert Cushman Murphy once
compared to his first great albatross at
sea with lifetime experiences like
seeing his first giant sequoia tree in
California gazing down into the Grand
Canyon he said
expectation sank into nothingness
albatrosses are birds of superlatives
they fly like their stunt pilots
inhabiting their own bodies and they’re
made to exploit the wind they spend most
of their long lives in the air and the
data that scientists have accumulated in
the last two decades are truly
astonishing they’ve run farther than any
other creature on the planet one Laysan
albatross like this one traveled 15,000
miles in a month and at the end of a 50
year lifespan the average for most
albatrosses an ordinary bird may have
covered more than three million miles
when it comes to frequent flyer miles
they must be in a class by themselves
but there’s another dimension to these
birds and they touch down on the remote
specks of land where they reproduce they
become different birds with intricate
social lives that stand in great
contrast to their solitary existence on
the open oceans and then there’s their
lives at sea and those are still the
least known of all even with all the
advances in modern science and sensing
technologies of the last two decades
most of the knowledge we have about
albatross is still circumstantial and
indirect and an image like this one that
a wandering albatross of New Zealand is
pretty rare and hard to get I was
intrigued by the notion that these
albatross is after all have to live on
the sea surface like any other sea bird
and I ended up experimenting that this
perspective by deploying an underwater
camera mounted on a pole and manoeuvring
it close to a bird
some facts albatross is actually in
aggregate you know there are 21 or 24
species of different kinds of albatross
is depending on who you talk to the
taxonomy is still a source of discussion
among scientists but they’re all
different and they range from elegant
gray heads like this one breathing on
the northern tip of South Georgia to
Fuller’s albatrosses that really look
out of place nesting on the tree
canopies in an island south of New
Zealand and even though albatross is
need wind they have managed to get along
with the doldrums and found a way to
establish a home base near the equator
these are waved albatross escorting on
barren lava rock in the Galapagos
Islands and courtship is another reason
why people express superlatives and it
comes to albatrosses
I mean I’m wandering albatross Mail
spreads these glorious wings in front of
a female it is truly an amazing sight
but she seems to express that it’s no
big deal
I was there I guess at the right time
this is where I camped the image is made
on albatross island truly a hallowed
place to me because this is very Robert
Cushman Murphy had made his original
observations 80 years earlier in the
beginning part of the 20th century and
even though it looks pretty rough and I
wasn’t looking too happy I was elated to
be there who is a true privilege and
this is the yacht that took me around
South Georgia that memorable summer most
albatrosses occur in the storm zone that
girdles the earth in the southern
hemisphere sailors know them as the
roaring 40s the furious 50s summer down
the air can feel like winter here snow
squall in a black brow colony makes
these birds hunker down while they’re
incubating their eggs albatrosses need
wind albatrosses and wind are
inseparable they do not fly like any
other earth instead of expending their
own energy by flapping wings they tap
the winds energy in a superb and
sophisticated manner the glide load of
the ocean to take advantage of wind
bouncing off waves and exploiting wind
gradients as they change from right
above the water to sixty feet above the
surface and here to make it come alive
is a short video clip by Chris that show
how to fly numbers undulations
rising up into the wind and then using
gravity to make forward progress this is
a royal albatross and here’s a smaller
black-browed albatross wholesale off
museum
now if that clip made you seasick you’re
not the only one it’s really hard the
photograph albatross is in flight on the
open ocean I’m sure it’s a little easier
things become a bit more predictable and
I don’t have to worry about my stomach
too much this is a black-footed
albatross flying in light winds over
French frigate Shoals in the leeward
islands of Hawaii you can see the wings
are fully stretched and even drooping at
the wingtip like a b-52 I only breathe
break that streamline and I have to come
in for a landing
they stand up use their feet as brakes
and they become ordinary birds on shore
but in the air they’re a symphony and
the more extreme the wind conditions are
the more albatross has come into their
own this is a royal albatross it
measures nearly eleven feet from wingtip
to wingtip they can bend themselves in
two sickles slicing through the air at
fifty miles an hour or more this image
reminds me of a line in Carl Safinaz
text for the geographic an albatross he
wrote is its own Todd longbow and the
breeze is its bowstring they’ve mastered
the art of staying in motion without
practically expending any energy
metabolic studies have shown that an
albatross in flight spends barely more
energy than an albatross sitting on the
ground doing absolutely nothing and when
a force
in Gale off the Falklands with the ocean
surface into froth these black-browed
albatross s were actually able to make
forward progress into that storm wind
they’re so comfortable in the air
there’s so much in control of their own
lives that if it weren’t for a need to
breathe I would never come back on shore
but they do have to there is that urge
young albatross is once they fledge
spend four five six years before they
come back and touch solid ground again
but when they do when they come back
that first summer they appear reluctant
to come down from the air and young
birds like these may cruise for hours on
end gliding back and forth above the
colony and I can imagine how
intimidating it might be when you’ve
been out there over the ocean as a
solitary bird and you’re confronted with
a sea bird sitting where do you land it
usually starts on the edges albatrosses
have little fear for humans because they
only come ashore on these remote islands
but still if I want to get into their
world I have to make myself small and
wait until the birds forget I’m there
and then when they go back to their own
lives I can show them as individuals as
partners and members of a collective
courtship in albatrosses is a highly
stylized ritual black brown male capes
at a female they fins with a bill
side-by-side they bow to one another
a female can indicate a willingness by
laying her head back to which a male can
respond by twisting his neck upside down
as he grooms his partner it all looks
very intimate and serene
but there’s another dimension to this
let me share with you this clip privacy
is hard to find in another crossbone
this is a mixed reading colony of grey
hats and black brows on the northern
Campbell I own
youngest youngsters perched on the
pedestals most of these islands are
really remote and hard to get to use a
pile of our gear mix at that of a BBC TV
crew on carcass island at the western
end of the Falkland Islands this is
going ashore on steeple Jason where we
landed with special permission from the
Wildlife Conservation Society which
after the island was bought by a
philanthropist handed over the title to
WCS and now the islands are protected
for the first time in their history and
we spend a memorable week assured at
earth Carl carrying gear sure but
onwards to another part of the Southern
Ocean Campbell Island 400 miles south of
New Zealand
here’s Christine after we made a long
and arduous hike to find Sudi
albatrosses this is a really interesting
species member of the Albatross family
it’s hard to pick favorites but many of
the specialists when you ask them they
will admit to a weak spot for these
light bland mantled sudhi albatrosses
which are cliff nesters they nest in
solitary fashion instead of aggregating
in large numbers here’s a close-up of
one of them and here’s an image of a
Sudi albatross in flight different kind
of flight pattern different kind of
outline but like mental sudhi
albatrosses wasn’t the only reason leave
it here we were there for the truly big
birds but getting around wasn’t the
easiest things we are after all in a
furious 50s
this is a force 11 gale weather forecast
learned that goods but we had only one
chance at crossing the islands so we did
we were knocked over multiple times
that’s a hot footed hike we took and
that’s Carl commenting on the condition
of his feet after an eight-hour hike
across Campbell Island this is a little
bit walk made to shelter two biologist
but it ended up being home sweet home to
the four of us you have to choose your
companions carefully on these kind of
trips Carl on the Left Peter more next
to him and Christian myself they’re
truly giants they’re even a little bit
bigger than the legendary wandering
albatross 2025 pounds 11 foot wingspan
in our day glorious they made for life
some royal albatrosses are known to have
lived for 70 years so a pair met bond
forms can stay together for 50 years
reproducing one chick every other year
so it’s important that you choose the
right partner and that is one reason for
this extended courtship that may spend
two years spending time together is
important here’s a little video clip in
one of these intimate moments in the
lives of two birds about to become
partners
but it doesn’t always go right
during our survey of Royals on Campbell
we came upon this nest with an abandoned
egg something must have gone wrong
one partner didn’t come back to the
other one that was incubating an egg and
after a while it could be several weeks
because they’re really faithful to one
another and to that precious egg after
several weeks and the other didn’t show
up that bird had to go save itself we
don’t know what happened but what we do
know that the natural mortality of
paired royal albatros is in their adult
lives is extremely low maybe one to two
percent per year so this could be one of
these instances where mortality was
induced by fishing practices and that of
course is the edge of this story that
I’m sharing with you tonight but let’s
talk about how it starts let’s talk
about how this pair bomb begins after
these birds spend years at sea they do
come back to the place where they’re
born not just the island but even the
neighborhood where they grew up
one bird on the ground soliciting the
company of others in there they land and
then they get together these are
teenagers they try out moves on one
another they know the moves by instinct
but that is not enough they have to
learn how to perform the right moves in
the right sequence in front of other
birds that are also not so sure about
themselves so teenagers at them all
these are called gams lose social
affiliations that may last for half an
hour and then the birds break up and
they fly off again and then another
aggregation they form an hour later in
another place and so it goes and
gradually they learn how to do it and
gradually I learned how to do my job I
know what they’re going to do so my job
is to be on the
referee and to be right behind them
because I know sooner or later one of
these Royals will unfold those glorious
wings and then I’m looking into their
world from my perspective
now you may think this is humorous but
in this serious business to these birds
halfway around the world once again now
we’re in the northern hemisphere
we’re in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of
thousands of evidences gather on the
beaches of subtropical
it’s a very unusual place tour now the
trust to call him when you’re there a
place on all the process in Black Sea
here are the black sheet albatrosses
they prefer the open beach and their
courtship has evolved in another
direction it’s more energetic and their
moves are even more extravagant now as I
mentioned earlier these birds know that
courtship repertoire by instinct
instinct is a term we use and we really
don’t know what these animals are doing
it really is a way to cover up our own
ignorance but those courtship moves
don’t mean anything until the birds
internalize how to do it and perform the
moves in the right sequence in front of
the right partner and to do it with
vigor as Duke Ellington once said it
don’t mean a thing until it got that
swing
so the culminating moment in a courtship
of these black feet is in both of them
stand up on tiptoes and they do it in
synchrony and they both lay their bills
against each other that is when things
may be getting seriously evolving
towards a partnership no matter whether
it’s one species or the other ultimately
courtship results in prospective
partners spending time together at a
nest site that a male has already
claimed but then of course it’s her
choice whether he’s the right guy and
whether it’s the right spot and then
parenting leads to one chick born after
an incubation that can take anywhere
from one to more than two months
and that chick is fed through
regurgitated oil from an upper stomach
albatrosses have two stomachs in the
upper stomach they digest their food the
oil floats to the surface fish and squid
are rendered into oil water protein and
fat and the oil is regurgitated
into the mouths and into the stomach’s
of these chicks and a happy albatross
chick is a chick with a lot of oil in
its belly they don’t get fed too often
initially maybe every couple of days and
then later on the intervals may lengthen
to one to two weeks if you’re a black
brown albatross chick you may be born on
top of a mud pedestal up to three feet
tall truly amazing structures that
parents keep adding on to year after
year and it’s extraordinary to
contemplate that these birds which fly
across ocean basins and make their way
without trouble back to that nest site
will not recognize their own egg if it
falls out of that mud pedestal their own
nest it just becomes an object that
means nothing to them but when it’s
inside that nest scrape it’s an object
to Beach other cherished
they EQ bait it and then when a chick
begins to pick at the surface of the
shell he begins to call out and the
parent begins to respond the bond
between parent and chick is established
before that chick is even emerging
chicks like this one a lay some crawling
out of the egg on turn Island in the
French frigate Shoals were born in
january/february and they’re dependent
on their parents for up to half a year
first couple of weeks parents alternate
pruden because there are predators
aerial predators to contend with here on
Campbell Island her gray head is warding
off a school flying overhead
here’s another school think of him as
gulls on steroids hook beaks clawed feet
and this one was thinking nothing of
assaulting a fully-grown wandering
albatross that was blundering into its
territory other enemies crested Caracara
also known as Johnny rooks
in the Falkland Islands patrolling the
edges of a huge albatross colony on
Beauchene at the southern edge of the
Falklands and here’s a group of
caracaras tearing apart at appleís
albatross juvenile so the fence comes
from being big and being tall and being
able to squirt that oil back to any one
who dares to come close so I stay upwind
taking a closer look truly endearing at
this stage of fuzzy chick this one is
maybe a month old but underneath a real
bird is growing but it takes a while it
takes months of shuttling in food from
the far reaches of an ocean basin to
make an albatross chick grow into a real
bird and then towards the end
there’s some humorous moments in a
matter of a few week every hairstyle
that’s been tried out in human society
is sported on top of would be
albatrosses from baroque to rockabilly
from Punk to crew-cut but no matter
which fashion you adopt and your Laysan
albatross you have to head to the beach
that’s where they all gather in the
early summer and that’s what I begin to
try out how to get into the air it’s
astonishing again to contemplate that
these amazing effortless fliers have to
learn how to fly their parents aren’t
there to teach them they have to figure
it out for themselves and they have no
clue about it other than this urge how
to run down the beach and get into the
air but coordination between feet and
wings is not always the best thing but
they keep trying they have so much
energy and they have to in a matter of a
few weeks learn how to do it or would I
die the naivete that is bird standing
there on the shoreline gathering by the
thousands by the tens of thousands there
are over a million albatross is in the
leeward islands of Hawaii and every
summer it’s a trial by fire but his lei
sounds and these Blackfeet albatrosses
the year when we were there Midway Atoll
last summer the winds were light and
many of these birds ended up paddling
out onto the lagoon and that is where
they were readying themselves for that
final flight that had taken out of the
sheltered waters
into the open blue ocean here’s one bird
interesting the notes that just before
the parents leave them they pump a last
meal into their stomachs these birds
have a little bit of a fat reserve but
it also makes them a little bit heavier
than the ideally need to be in order to
take flight
so here’s that video clip the interior
of Midway Atoll thousands and thousands
of young birds and here’s one heading to
the beach seeing the ocean for the first
time
though not so certain about things not
so good on its feet yet but he’s not the
only one
but not everybody makes it
there’s heavy mortality in the middle of
summer many birds get into the water
before they’re ready to go they haven’t
learned how to waterproof themselves yet
preening using that oil gland at the
base of their tail and they get
waterlogged some of them take by taken
by sharks many of them sink you’re not
seen again some of them are able to make
it back to the beach the lucky ones may
get a second chance but for many there
is no recourse it’s truly hard wrenching
to watch but there’s nothing you can do
it’s all part of nature and in seabird
colonies you see everything turn Island
in that chain of islands that stretches
from Hawaii halfway towards Japan turn
island is a speck of land that is where
we went along with two researchers from
the University of California at Santa
Cruz truly heaven on earth if you want
to study albatrosses low tech tools
little plastic bucket in which she
weighs chicks but it’s high-tech science
this is an instrument that has
revolutionized our understanding of
albatrosses it’s a sensor that can plot
what a bird’s arm can accumulate other
data oceanographic data and beam the
information up to a satellite overhead
signal is beamed down to a server in
France
researchers can log on to it in almost
in real time they can see what the birds
are doing but they’re up to this is
Scott one of the people with whom we’ve
worked here he is applying one of these
transmitters gluing it on to the back of
an albatross the package weighs only a
few grams and it really doesn’t bother
the birds at all this is an image made
using my laptop set up on the beach in
front of an S
thing albatross and this is the pathway
of a single albatross starting and
ending up back on turn island these
birds are amazing but they are also
becoming biological sensors for us
because we can follow them through these
amazing instruments and they gather data
for us not just about what they’re doing
but ever that is happening on the open
ocean Midway of course there’s a theater
of war during World War two
things have calmed down on the ground
the islands are protected but on the
open ocean in the Central Pacific it’s
still an area of conflict between all
the trusses in US this is just one small
pile of junk that the US Fish and
Wildlife Service had to collect from
Midway lagoon which is just in Maynooth
part of the Central Pacific there’s a
lot of stuff out there there’s a gyre in
the Central Pacific or stuff accumulates
all this junk
plastic objects rubber objects that
float on the surface of the ocean some
of the objects I collected on Midway and
put out in front of an incubating
albatross toothbrushes cigarette
lighters GI Joes you name it they find
it and because it tastes just like squid
they swallow it take it back to their
chicks which died by the thousands from
indigestion you see the corpses a
plastic and rubber inside this young one
was lucky because the parent
regurgitated a bottle cap on the ground
instead of into a challenge to a chick’s
stomach
of course the problems not confined to
the Central Pacific here’s a long roll
of plastic that had been regurgitated by
a wandering albatross on South Georgia
if it had ended up in a bird stomach
where it would have unfolded of course
it would have caused mortality we do
know what is happening out there there
are enough observers on sea of Ferenc
fishing boats accumulating data that we
know but a fishing boats go and what
they’re doing and we also know where the
albatross has go and it’s no surprise
that they both end up going to the same
areas where fish and squid are abundant
the albatross is accumulate behind these
fishing boats because the fishing is
easy there they grab onto the bait that
is extended out from these fishing
vessels in the case of a long liner it
can be 80 miles of baited hooks and
because the wandering albatross is our
the biggest and the brashest of them all
they end up near the baited hooks they
out-compete the others and that’s
probably one reason why this suffer
disproportionately from this problem
they drown nigel is an Australian
seabird biologist who first started
studying the problem of the sea bird
bycatch in the late 1980s and here he is
on a fishing boat off Hawaii talking
with fishermen which have adopted
another one of these easy solutions
instead of running out the bait from the
stern of a boat running it out from the
site and again you can see these very
simple devices that are dangling there
that have reduced the mortality by more
than 90%
olam the birds are pretty safe now most
of the significant colonies have
protected status this is one of these
extraordinary places in the Falkland
Islands an island called Beauchesne just
south of the main Falkland Islands or I
had the great privilege to camp for a
week
wall-to-wall birds his colony extends
for two and a half miles but it’s out at
sea that the problems no occur and
ironically it’s the bird of legend the
wandering albatross that seems to be at
the highest risk right now when I first
went to South George in the late 1980s
more than a thousand breeding pairs of
this amazing snowy white race occurred
here the population has plummeted a
fewer than half of them now and you fix
if you extend that line there’s only one
end point and that is extinction but it
doesn’t have to happen
melville once wrote in the course of
Moby Dick when he was trying to
articulate the majesty of albatrosses he
wrote is it conceivable that such an
utterly majestic creature is utterly
unknown to me and assure that was them
we have no excuse anymore not to know
about these birds and not to care about
them beyond the science beyond the
conservation a personal note what these
birds mean to me my mission is to bring
animals to people and to show them as
dignified beings or maybe very different
from ourselves but they lead parallel
lives and there are resemblances as I
hope I’ve shared with you this evening
these amazing achievements these birds
is individuals and their partnerships
lifelong bonds
but even beyond that personal note and
this is the last comment I would like to
make these birds mean more than just
inspiring all in just individually they
are ambassadors for complete consistence
there are vital signs of wild roses that
even little man but as long as they’re
there
because they’re flying numbers
something must be right with the world
you
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