World Albatross Day: DOC gets in a flap over plight of giant sea bird

DOC scientists Graeme Elliott and Kath Walker visit the Antipodes Islands each year monitor monitoring the giant sea birds. Photo / Supplied, Graeme Elliott, DOC

In New Zealand we pay so much attention to flightless birds, we often neglect the fact that our islands are also home to the world's largest and most magnificent oceangoing storm petrels.

It's about time then that the wandering albatross got its own day.

To mark the first World Albatross Day the Department of Conservation is celebrating the country's population of the birds and raising awareness of the deadly threats affecting them.

New Zealand is home to 17 albatross species including the Great Albatross, which - with a wingspan of 3.6 metres - is the largest bird on the planet.

The range and habitat of the birds is also impressively vast. They'll travel up to 16000km in a single journey - or roughly the distance of Auckland to Istanbul - without touching the ground.

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"Albatross are ocean adventurers and through our work with Live Ocean and Fisheries New Zealand we have attached transmitters to track the birds to see where they go and where they interact with fishing fleets," says conservationist Graeme Elliot.

In 2013 a bird tagged with a GPS tracker clocked up an impressive 46 days in the air, the longest recorded flight.

This is the first-ever #WorldAlbatrossDay, and we’re highlighting DOC’s high-tech research to better understand and protect threatened Salvin’s albatross. But studying them isn’t easy…

Read the full blog post here: https://t.co/hTEA5wBsmj pic.twitter.com/dcTWOxLdZh

— Te Papa Atawhai (@docgovtnz) June 19, 2020

"This year, we tracked a female who flew to South America from the Antipodes Islands. We were on the island when she came home," says Graeme.

Both he and Kath Walker have been studying the birds for 25 years. In that time they have noticed a dramatic population crash in the native albatross population, which they worry is due to both climate change and the impact of fishing.

Although Albatrosses spend most of their lives in the air, they do spend some of it in colonies in the Subantarctic Islands and New Zealand. One of the best places for spotting the Royal Albatross is on the Otago Peninsular. Since 2016 they have set up a live webcamera showing a nest. The current chick - which as year doesn't have a name - is 141 days old and the offspring of OGK and YRK - named for their coloured tracking bands. Both remarkably plain names for birds that can live to 42 years.

However, it is rare that the birds live to such an old age due to their vulnerability to accidental death from fishing. Thousands of the birds die every year, according to DOC, caught up in longline fisheries and after swallowing hooks.

In the Antipodes Islands south of New Zealand, predators have been accidentally introduced. Mice on the islands have led the Antipodean albatross to be labelled Nationally Critical - the highest threat level, on par with kākāpō.

The first World Albatross Day was founded to raise awareness for albatross species and marks an agreement between thirteen different countries - including New Zealand - to reduce the accidental killing and bycatch of birds.