Up Close and Personal With… Laysan Albatrosses

With their distinctive long beaks, mammoth wingspan and often comical expressions, albatrosses are a unique creature amongst all our other seabirds. This article is going to focus particularly on Laysan albatrosses which live on abandoned atolls in the Pacific Ocean over 2,000 miles from land and dense human civilisation. Due to their elusive location hidden away from sight, the habits of these creatures remained a mystery to scientists for many years but sadly, albeit not totally unexpectedly, our plastic waste has beaten us to these beautiful creatures, placing a giant colourful human ‘footprint’ on their lives while the actual sand on which they nest remains devoid of boot imprints.

Laysan albatrosses are truly incredible creatures which also provide those lucky enough to see them with a considerable amount of comedy. It only takes a quick internet search to see videos of these birds attempt to take off with their giant six foot wingspan. The take off requires quite a considerable run up, much like an aeroplane but once in the air, they can remain away from land for years, travelling thousands of miles with barely a flap of their wings as they use currents to soar and swoop in their hunt for food. In fact, these birds as so good at flying, designers are currently designing planes around their flying techniques to create increasingly fuel-efficient planes. When these ocean-going birds do touch down, 94% of them live on only two islands in the remote Pacific Ocean; Laysan Island and Midway Island. There were so many albatrosses on these islands at one point that flights had to be diverted as the risk of bird related hazards was too high! It has been pointed out that Midway Island is not merely the name of a place but also describes the place that humanity is in. We teeter halfway towards ecological disaster in regards to plastic and climate change as we hover midway towards complete environmental destruction. Yet we can, and should, see this as a positive; what other choice do we have? We still have hope halfway through a football, rugby, tennis match so why not now? We may be halfway but everything can change if we get ourselves together right now.

So what exactly is threatening these critters in the first place? Plastic, as always, remains a firm enemy to our wildlife, particularly so in this case due to the albatross’s lifestyle. Once Laysan albatrosses have covered thousands of miles at sea, seeing the world, finding themselves and all of that, they settle back on one of these two atolls and find a partner who they mate with for life. Many of these get to celebrate their golden anniversary as they can live for around 60 years, even still producing chicks at this age! Once chicks are born, the parents can fly out to sea for up to 17 days, covering an astonishing 1,600 miles in this time, to find food such as squid beaks and cuttlefish for their young. Their feeding technique provides the first hurdle as they skim the surface of the water with their beaks to pick up snacks but also sneaky buoyant pieces of plastic which litter the wave crests. Research has shown that lighters in particular are an issue for albatrosses as their shape and sometimes colour makes them pretty tricky to decipher from squid beaks. This problem has got even worse over the last few decades as our possessions have now turned into short term products with long lasting zippo lighters switched for cheap plastic alternatives, easily lost, easily thrown away, easily replaced. Businesses remain happy with this situation as the shorter lived an item is, the more they sell, fuelling our ‘quick to buy quick to throw’ society which is producing unmanageable amounts of waste.

So once albatrosses return to their young, they regurgitate everything they collected during their voyage - fish, plastic and all. This forms the fluffy chicks’ diet for the first five months as they fill their bellies with energy-fuelling food. At five months old, they produce their first bolus which is a pretty disgusting bundle; a collection of all the indigestible foods they have eaten in their short lives from fish scales to bits of wood to, you guessed it, plastic. This all sounds positive; the plastic has left their stomachs for good and they are free to continue their lives. Yet some of these bottle tops, lighters, pen lids and microplastics could have been sitting in their little stomachs for five whole months; that’s a lot of time to cause havoc in. During this period, plastic may have punctured organs, left chicks feeling fat and full when in reality their body contains almost none of the nutrients needed for growth or passed on toxic chemicals which have been lurking invisibly on the surface of our waste. All this meant that in the 1990s, 100,000 chicks were dying every year just on Midway Island alone. With this species, plastic poses a much greater threat for chicks who cannot regurgitate the harmful plastic offenders like adults can and this high loss of chicks each year has a devastating effect on their total population. Laysan albatrosses don’t start to reproduce until they are ten years old and even then, only give birth to one chick a year meaning that if the population starts to fall, it takes a very long time for their numbers to recover.

These parents are just trying to care for their babies like every other species on the planet but our current actions seemingly only complicate their lives. They remain unaware that humans have created a new ‘wonder material’ which can outlive pretty much every species on the planet. When they see a floating printer ink cartridge, they just think they’ve found a deliciously large treat for lunch and it’s not just plastic which is playing havoc with their lives either. Increasing storm surges under climate change threaten their nests on the grassy dunes as our emissions spiral out of control and with 90% of their population living on low lying oceanic islands, this is a massive problem. Our demand for fish saw kilometres long drift nets used in the 1990s which killed 17,500 Laysan albatrosses per year as bycatch until they were finally banned, yet their replacement is not much better. Long lines may be only a single fishing line but they can be covered in up to 30,000 sharp hooks all temptingly covered in bait, another irresistible snack for our seabirds who then remain tangled in the hooks and line. Several scientists have stated that seabirds covered in oil from an oil spill have a greater chance of survival than one that is entangled in plastic waste. Every few years we read stories about catastrophic oil spills which have impacted thousands of seabirds, yet we seem to forget that a much greater threat is out to get our precious wildlife every day.

Our marine life needs our attention now, today. Even when the media fail to cover it, plastic is still rampaging amongst the waves. The time truly is now or never and it starts with each of us. To make a difference to our inspiring natural world, why not consider cutting back on plastic; switch your toothbrush for a bamboo one, stop flushing your bathroom waste down the toilet instead of taking it to the bin and cease wrapping vegetables in unnecessary plastic bags. All these changes are so simple and the zero-waste movement has never been bigger. Almost every coastal community seems to have a marine conservation organisation or a group set on reducing waste, so why not join in and tackle this challenge with friends, neighbours and family whilst inspiring others across the globe to do so with much needed positive social media messages.

By Neve McCracken-Heywood