Let the tracking season begin...

photo by kelli burkinshaw (www.flickr.com/kburki)

And they're off! Twelve tags are currently transmitting from 7 black-footed and 5 Laysan albatrosses, all of which are tending to a nest with an egg. They're off to a big start, flying incredible distances over short periods of time. Many of the tagged birds had been incubating for a few weeks waiting for his/her partner to return to the nest, and now it's their own turn to take 2-3 weeks at sea to forage in the productive waters of higher latitudes and resupply their energy stores. Albatrosses are so efficient at flight that a trip to Japan or the Gulf of Alaska costs them, energetically-speaking, almost nothing; sure beats $4.00/gallon for petrol!

Albatrosses are designed to fuel their flight by a play between gravitational pull and the updraft produced by wind off the waves, and they are soaring specialists with very long, slender wings. They are able to lock their wings in place while in gliding/soaring flight, which minimizes energy expenditure which would be lost in holding the wings up otherwise.


Laysan albatrosses are more oceanic than black-footeds and tend to forage in the transitional waters where the subtropical frontal zone and the subarctic frontal zone meet and create a turbulent, mixed zone high in productivity, which, for an albatross means gooood eatin'. They also forage near the confluence of the Oyashio current coming down along the northern Japanese coast and the Kuroshio current, coming up along the southern part of the Japanese coast. These two N-S and S-N currents meet right at the shelf where there is a huge upwelling system, and so these waters are extremely productive and are frequented by albatross and man alike, not to mention a whole other host of marine predators.

Black-footed albatrosses forage closer to the North American coast, typically in the Gulf of Alaska and near the Aleutians, or further south along the coast of Washington, Oregon and even my home state of California, dipping into the rich supply of food that the California current brings.

The tracks below are examples of a few birds that are being followed right now. The purple tracks on the east are of black-footeds and the yellow track west is that of a Laysan (ignore the outlier points going into russia). Combined, they have covered over 15,000 miles from Tern Island ,thus far. That's over four times the distance from Anchorage to Los Angeles, a trip which my boyfriend and I took 3.5 weeks to complete in a car. Pretty respectable distances.















Onward and upward little albatrosses! More tracks will be posted as the season progresses.

I'm back!

After eight months, two cities and two continents, I am back in the lovely French Frigate Shoals, revisiting the lively colonies of breeding black-footed and Laysan albatrosses. It felt like I never left the place. The albatrosses are still doing what they do best: dancing their elaborate and mesmerizing courtship dances, laying and incubating their fist-sized eggs, exploiting the energy of wind and waves to soar across thousands upon thousands of miles in the North Pacific on foraging trips, and keeping me very, very busy.

The bunkhouse is as comfortable as ever - I even got my old room back, though, thanks to a prior volunteer, it is now much more decorative and home-y. The white terns chatter away by day and night on my windowsill, and I had forgotten how nice it is to fall asleep to their sounds, which blend so nicely with the soft sound of the ocean waves lapping against the sea wall just outside my window.



After the first few weeks being battered by heavy storm after heavy storm, the skies have cleared and the nights have been incredible. The depth of the stars here is like nothing I've seen before; even the clear, crisp winter nights in the high desert where I grew up didn't display the stars like this. They are so bright that they really do twinkle (just like the song!), emitting the whole prism of visible light. It is easy to lose yourself in your own thoughts when gazing up at a night sky like that... that is until some brown noddy flies past and poops on your forehead. Then, you remember you are on Tern Island where the ball is always in the birds' court.



We went snorkeling yesterday, and I met some of the other island inhabitants. Two monk seals slowly twirling their bodies in the water below made for a great show. The younger seal was quite curious with the awkward, pasty, some might say floundering, bodies up above, and we stared at each other with equal (i hope) amusement for about 15 minutes, before he slowly twirled away into the darker waters broken up by shafts of light. After staring into the spot where the seal disappeared, my lungs reminded me that I don't have the myoglobin stores of a pinniped, and I choked on some sea water, in a grudging admittance of how very differently built we are from them; but at the same time, we are still similar enough to have recognizable stares of curiosity, interest and wonder. Those 15 minutes, interacting with a curious monk seal, one of a dwindling estimated world population of <2000, is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.



It is good to be back.