18 February 2022, San Diego Bird Festival, Pelagic Tour

For most of their lives black-footed albatrosses (Phoebastria nigripes) wander the North Pacific visiting land only to nest.  When they do 97.5% of them breed on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the green swath at the center of the Birds of the World map embedded below.

Of that 97.5%, one third nests on Midway Atoll, especially on Eastern Island which hosts the largest albatross colony in the world.

Unfortunately Eastern Island averages only 2.6 meters above sea level. This puts the albatross nests in grave danger. In 2011 a tsunami wiped out 30,000 nests and …

A 2015 study estimated that a 2-meter sea level rise and storm waves—possible in the next century under many climate change scenarios—would flood up to 91% of black-footed albatross nests on the Eastern Island of Midway Atoll.

— Science Magazine: ‘They were destined to drown’: How scientists found these seabirds a new island home

Since black-footed albatrosses don’t reproduce until they are seven years old and then raise only one chick every two years the species will quickly go extinct if they don’t have a safe place to nest, so scientists developed a plan to establish a colony at Guadalupe Island, Mexico, a biosphere reserve off the west coast of Baja California that rises as high as 1,298 meters above sea level.

Location of Guadalupe Island, Mexico, embedded from Google Maps

This Science Magazine video shows how black-footed albatross chicks and eggs were translocated more than 3,500 miles to protect them from future extinction.

Today I’m on a pelagic tour off the coast of California where I hope to see the black-footed albatross, though they are rare at this time of year in the locations we are visiting. Even if we do see one, it is extremely unlikely that it came from Guadalupe Island.

To give you an idea of what a pelagic tour is like, here’s a video from a tour out of San Mateo County, California. Everyone’s focused on the northern fulmar and mention the black-footed albatross as a reference point. A reference point! It would be a Life Bird for me.

UPDATE 21 Feb 2022: As expected, I did not see a black-footed albatross.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, range map embedded from Birds of the World; click on the cpations to see the originals)