Short-Tailed Albatross Chase

On Thursday March 21, the F/V Princess texted me a photo of a big Albatross with a huge pink bill that was sitting off the stern of their boat while they were fishing for Sablefish over the upper Noyo Canyon. One glance confirmed it was a Short-tailed Albatross, one of the rarest birds in the North Pacific. Before the 19th century, there were millions of them, but the plumage trade in the late 19th century led to their extirpation from the few islands off Japan where they nested. Like most seabirds, they are unafraid of humans, having evolved in an environment where we posed no threat to them, and this made them easy prey for the hunters. By the 1930s the islands were emptied and a scientific expedition in 1949 found no evidence of nesting, so they were declared extinct.

Albatrosses spend their first several years out at sea, not returning to land until they mature five to ten years after fledging. This saved the species, as there were a few dozen juveniles out at sea when the adults were wiped out, and those juveniles eventually returned and began reproducing. Protected from hunting, their population has recovered to a few thousand individuals. Most of those forage from Japan north to the Bering Sea and east to the Gulf of Alaska. Some range south along the continental shelf to Canada, and a few get as far south as California. The California Bird Records Committee lists 67 sightings off California from 1949 to 2023.

Excited by the prospect of seeing one of these magnificent birds, I organized a “chase boat” and got a dozen people on board the Kraken the following Tuesday. We had a fabulous morning on the water, with Black-footed Albatrosses coming and going almost all the time, and every time a new one arrived we got hopeful. None however sported the enormous pink bill that we were hoping for. Our consolation prize was a Laysan Albatross, initially a bit coy but eventually providing nice looks to everyone on the boat. Entertainment was provided by the many Black-footed Albatrosses (we counted 19 at one time) squabbling with each other and the many Gulls that were drawn to our chum.

First published MCAS Black Oystercatcher April 2024