Seafarers once believed that albatrosses carried the souls of drowned sailors, and thought it was bad luck to kill one, a superstition famously illustrated in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. These beliefs may well have been inspired by two characteristics of these large seabirds: albatrosses follow ships for days at a time and they rarely visit land except to breed on remote isolated islands.
Where do albatrosses spend time?
Albatrosses are the largest seabirds, skilled gliders that remain at sea for months and slip in and out of ocean troughs with rarely a flap of their long thin wings. As long as there is a wind blowing, an albatross can remain aloft. If the wind stops blowing, however, the birds are becalmed. Their wings are not designed for flapping flight and they cannot maintain flight without the support of air currents. The windy ocean is their habitat—if you hope to see an albatross up close, you’re going to have to go to sea in a windy season.
Most albatrosses (seventeen species) live in the southern oceans between Antarctica and the southern parts of South America, Africa, and Australasia, areas of consistent wind. Typically solitary, they fly low over the ocean surface where they find most of their food: squid, fish, and crustaceans. Albatrosses often feed at night, when prey species tend to move nearer the ocean surface. Centuries of human sailing have also turned albatrosses into scavengers who follow ships hoping for food be tossed overboard—fishing offal and food scraps. This behavior has placed many albatross species at risk of extinction: birds following long-line fishing vessels go after baited hooks and are caught and drowned.
Albatrosses don’t breed until they are about five years old, and some species don’t breed until about fifteen years of age. Because non-breeding birds spend little or no time on the island breeding grounds however, ocean-going vessels see the birds at sea at all times of the year. Tracking devices attached to albatrosses have shown that individual birds tend to remain in a particular region rather than wandering aimlessly.
Albatrosses of the Pacific Ocean
Four species are found in the central and northern parts of the Pacific Ocean: the Waved Albatross breeds near the equator in the eastern Pacific, the Short Tailed Albatross breeds off Japan and Taiwan, the Black-footed Albatross breeds in the northwest pacific, and the Laysan Albatross breeds in Hawaii. Individuals of other species sometimes stray north in the Atlantic and Pacific—sighting an albatross in the Northern Atlantic would be exceedingly unusual. In coastal areas where deep ocean waters lie close to shore, albatrosses are sometimes seen from land with a telescope.
To sum up:
- If you want to see an albatross, plan an ocean trip in the Pacific ocean or in the southern ocean, roughly between 45 degrees and 70 degrees south.
- Ships attract albatrosses, which is in your favor, and in the southern latitudes, you are virtually guaranteed wind, but if conditions are calm in the Pacific, you’re unlikely to see an albatross.
- Alternatively, you might visit an island where albatrosses breed; however, this would be much more difficult to arrange and doubtless very expensive.
If you see an Amsterdam or a Chatham Albatross, you are extremely lucky: these two species are critically endangered.
Read more about albatrosses:
Sources:
Elphick, Jonathan ed. Atlas of Bird Migration. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2007.
Kaufman, Kenn. Birds of North America. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Perrins, Christopher ed. Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2003
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