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Oikonos ~ Ecosystem Knowledge: Catching Albatross

It’s an overcast day, but not foggy, as we gather in the chill morning in Bodega Bay, California. A pile of gear forms as we empty out the cars: a couple coolers full of frozen squid and salmon carcasses, a cooler with food and drink for us, a cooler full of a variety of scientific equipment, two fishing rods, and several day packs. There are four of us on the team: Michelle, David, Carol and me.

We load the gear into a cart and wheel it down to the dock to the C. Magister, a small sport fishing boat owned by NOAA’s Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary that has been converted to do marine surveys. We sleepily greet Michael Carver, our captain. Everything has been stowed and we’ve had our safety briefing. By 7:45 we’re on our way. It takes a couple hours to steam out to the northwest edge of Cordell Bank, where we should encounter large numbers of Black-footed Albatross.

We have ten transmitters to put on the birds - we hope things will go smoothly today so we’ll be done in two more. It can be exhausting work if the weather is a little snotty, which it is. We notice as we go further offshore that the swells are increasing and coming from two directions. Ugh, a recipe for seasickness.

After several hours we finally start seeing birds - time to catch a few. The process takes a while; first we need to attract a large enough group to create a feeding frenzy around a bait bag filled with salmon heads and skeletons floating thirty feet behind the boat. The albatross are olfactory geniuses, so they can smell a rotting carcass from miles away. In addition to our bait bag, we dribble cod-liver oil, bacon fat and whatever other substance we think will create an appealing smell to them. This makes a large smelly slick, and soon the first few customers fly by. We fling squid to them, over and over again. Eventually, one lands and starts to gobble up the free meal. Slowly others are attracted, and we suddenly end up with a motley crew of forty-six Black-footed Albatross feasting around the bag in a big squawking, braying, bill-chattering and whistling mass.

Michelle and David then climb up on top of the boat with the two fishing rods and begin to cast to the group of birds using a barb-less hook with a tempting, smelly squid as bait. As soon as a bird bites, it’s reeled in. I scoop it up in a big dip net once it’s close enough to the boat, and we quickly untangle it from the net as the hook drops from its beak. I sit on the deck with the albatross in my lap holding it for a few photos of the head, which are taken for aging purposes, and for the attachment of the transmitter to the back with waterproof tape and a little glue. Lastly, the foot is pricked to get a blood sample for DNA. From the blood sample we will learn the sex and find out what population our friend is from (Hawaii, or perhaps the islands off Japan).

The bumpy ocean makes the work go slowly, and a few of us start to feel a bit ill. In twenty minutes, we’re done with the first bird, and release it gently back onto the ocean. It swims off perplexed, preening some feathers back into place, but not bothered too much. The captured bird soon returns to the free meal, the antenna visible on its back. It starts fighting for the bait bag and gulping squid. We repeat the process on five more birds before it’s time for us to head back to shore. We’ll go out again tomorrow to attach the last four transmitters, but for now we relax on the back deck, watching the albatross and shearwaters fly by. And suddenly we notice our new smell. We reek of squid ink that has been sitting in the sun, albatross poop, and cod-liver oil, quite the medley of interesting aromas: no wonder the albatross were attracted to us.

Why do we want to attach transmitters to Black-footed Albatross? First, we hope to gain knowledge about where the birds travel after leaving the California current: if they fly to feed in an area of the international long-line fishery, they might wind up becoming part of the bycatch. Fortunately, steps can be taken to encourage use of fishing gear that will prevent them from getting caught.

More importantly, however, by making their daily locations available to the public as part of our education programs, we hope to engender both interest and caring: helping people to understand that a bird that hatched in one place - Hawaii, in this case - may fly over a vast area of ocean to our west coast, and then on into international waters again. We catch them, tag them, and let them go their way in the hopes that they’ll stay safe from harm in their immense freedom of flight.

So by 6:00 pm, we’re back at the dock, unloaded and ready for dinner, showers, sleep, and round two, tomorrow.

Sophie Webb is an ecologist for Oikonos ~ Ecosystem Knowledge. More information on the Oikonos albatross project can be found online at www.oikonos.org/albatross.htm.

Oikonos ~ Ecosystem Knowledge
400 Farmer Street
Felton, CA 95018
415/ 868-1399

www.oikonos.org

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