Albatrosses of Alaska: A Lifetime at Sea, and the Threats They Face

A Laysan albatross over the sea off Umnak Island, with Mount Vsevidof behind. Photo: Liz Labunski/USFWS.

Few people ever see an albatross, which makes spotting one a special treat. The 22 species of albatross are masters of efficient long-distance gliding. Their long wings — the wandering albatross holds the record at nearly 12 feet across — use air currents and temperature changes to generate enormous lift, so an albatross can fly for hours without resting or even flapping, and cross thousands of miles of open ocean.

Albatrosses live for decades and spend most of their lives at sea; a bird counted on its breeding grounds may be older than the scientists counting it. Sailors have long known that albatrosses follow ships for an easy meal, and those encounters, deliberate or accidental, drove some species close to extinction. International conservation has helped their numbers rise in the Pacific.

Three species off Alaska

Three albatrosses are common at sea off Alaska. They breed on ocean islands, including the world's largest albatross colony, at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

• Short-tailed albatross. Endangered, it breeds mainly on two remote islands in the western Pacific, about 85 percent of them on Torishima, an active volcano in Japan's Izu Islands. From 2008 to 2012 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Japan's Yamashina Institute for Ornithology moved chicks to Mukojima, a historic breeding site, to start a third colony, and the birds have recently bred on Midway too. They feed along shelf breaks in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska and down the Pacific coast.
• Black-footed albatross. Not listed under the Endangered Species Act, it lives only in the Pacific and breeds on Hawaiian and Japanese islands, with a courtship display of head bobs, wing flaps and foot stomps. Like other albatrosses, it is thought to mate for life.
• Laysan albatross. Smaller, with a white head and belly that look "gull-like", grey-brown wings with white undersides and a dark tail. 97.7 percent of them breed in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, then head north through the Pacific toward Alaska's fishing grounds. They feed mostly at night, on squid, fish, crustaceans and flying-fish eggs.

A black-footed albatross over the Gulf of Alaska. Photo: Dan Cushing/USFWS.

Hooks and streamer lines

Albatrosses that follow fishing boats can be hooked or tangled on longlines and drowned. The Fish and Wildlife Service worked with the fishing industry, Washington Sea Grant and the National Marine Fisheries Service to develop streamer lines, which form a visual barrier that keeps seabirds away from baited hooks. In Alaska they have sharply reduced albatross bycatch — and fishermen say they save money, too, since the birds no longer steal the bait. All three species have benefited.

The short-tailed albatross, near extinction around the turn of the 20th century and listed as endangered in 2000, now numbers an estimated 7,365 birds and is growing at 8.9 percent a year.

Plastic

Albatrosses feed at the surface and often swallow floating plastic by mistake. It can fill their stomachs and starve them. Worse, parents feed their chicks by regurgitating what they found at sea, and they are estimated to carry thousands of pounds of plastic debris to places like Midway every year. Dead chicks that starved from swallowing plastic lie on the breeding grounds.

A black-footed albatross chick that died after being fed plastic. Photo: Dan Clark/USFWS.

Everyone can help: recycle, refuse single-use plastic, carry a reusable bottle and shopping bags, and pick up plastic litter, so that future generations can still watch albatrosses glide.

Sources

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "Albatross: Lifetime at Sea"; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Photographs by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.