Rare albatross finds love on Midway

History is in the making, the US Fish and Wildlife Service hopes, at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

This time it is not about a battle, but a love affair between two very rare albatross the US Fish and Wildlife Service hopes will produce an offspring.

An 18-year-old female short-tailed albatross has attracted attention for years on Midway Atoll as she returns every year during the nesting season in search of a mate. Normally she is greeted by thousands of the smaller Laysan and black-footed albatross. On November 17, someone more her size appeared, a male “golden gooney”.

The male short-tailed albatross landed about 150 yards from the female and was obviously interested in trying to mate with albatross located close by.

After several days of waiting in hopes they would find each other. Refuge

Manager Rob Shallenberger assisted the effort by moving the male within 40 feet of the female. About an hour later they were involved in a dynamic dancing ritual.

“Unfortunately, the male has now returned to his original spot, and although the female has not been sighted the past few days there is a possibility she is busy feeding to help her body produce an egg,” commented Shallenberger. “Just the fact they danced and possibly mated is

significant.

These massive seabirds have a seven and a half foot wingspan and stand three and a half feet tall. They are from an extremely small worldwide population with breeding restricted to two remote islands, Torishima and Minami-kojima in Japan. Only one other time in 1993 a short-tailed of the opposite sex displayed with Midway’s lone female.

“These two definitely stand out in the

crowd. Like their cousins, they deliver an almost comical, but much louder,

distinguishable, deep-throated ‘mooing’

sound as part of their mating ritual,” said Shallenberger. The female has laid an infertile egg every other year for the past six years. The good news is she is due to lay another this winter. So biologists are keeping their fingers crossed that the full moon and a stroke of luck produce a fertile egg- If albatross survive the first four to eight years of their life, the adolescents usually come back to the same island, arriving very close to the same rearing site to find a mate for life. They are ready to breed around age six.

“The current population is so low that the remote possibility of a successful union of these birds on Midway is exciting,” commented Robert Smith, Pacific Islands

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Continued from page 43 Ecoregion Manager.

“This species is on the come back from a population thought to be extinct in 1949.

Fortunately, weathermen stationed on Torishima in 1951 discovered a small pocket of ten birds. Today there are at least 230 breeding pairs.”

Besides their home islands in Japan, short-tailed albatrosses occur across the Pacific Ocean south to the northwest Hawaiian islands, north to the Aleutian

Chain, west to the Asian coast, east to the coast of North America and in the Bering Sea. They have been listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act since the Act was passed in 1973. However, when the US and foreign endangered species lists were combined an administrative error resulted in protection throughout its range except in the States.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is in the midst of correcting the error. Breeding habitat and future survival of the species are

threatened by volcanic activity and monsoon rains on Torishima Island, and by disputed ownership of Minami-kojima Island. Other mortalities are caused by longline fishing, plastics pollution and oil spills.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been working extensively with the fishing industry and the National Marine Fisheries Service to minimise effects of longline fishing on the short-tailed albatross and other migratory seabirds. ■