by Alison Barratt
Steven Siegel/Marine Photobank
Stretching away from Hawai’i like pearls in the Pacific blue are the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. They’re a chain of small volcanic atolls, seamounts, and islands, uninhabited by humans, but home to spectacular breeding colonies of one of our planet’s greatest ocean wanderers—the albatross.
Two of the 22 species of albatross nest here, on U.S. soil. Three-quarters of the world’s endangered black-footed albatross and 90 percent of the global population of Laysan albatross make an annual and brief pilgrimage to these remote isles. A select few choose to nest in urban Hawaiian “mainland” neighborhoods, and the “gooney birds,” as they are affectionately known, can be seen using local roads as runways for takeoff. However, the vast majority prefer the isolation of Laysan and Midway, 1,000 miles from civilization.
In 1891, the first ornithologists stepped onto the shores of an avian paradise, Laysan Island, to catalog and collect on behalf of Walter Rothschild of the international banking dynasty. Rothschild had a lifelong passion for zoology and frequently funded expeditions around the world to collect specimens. He was also a well-known eccentric who drove around London in a carriage pulled by zebras.
The resulting publication, The Avifauna of Laysan in 1893, included a series of photographic plates which, in the words of the expedition’s leader, “illustrates much better the immense numbers of this bird, and its utter fearlessness and tameness, than any description possibly could.” He also noted, sadly, their inherent vulnerability, “albatross…extremely foolish and fearless; can be caught with the hands.”
Although albatrosses have historically selected remote and human-free nesting sites, they have (unfortunately) not remained free from human impact. Vast colonies like the one seen by these early explorers no longer exist. In the United States, as elsewhere, albatross colonies have been subjected to the depredations of introduced predators and non-native species, egg raiding, feather collecting, and guano mining (as well as the construction of roads, railroads, and other structures needed to better exploit these resources).
Today, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands have national monument status and the waters that surround them are part of one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. Though efforts have been made to reverse some of man’s impacts, such as eradication of pests and predators, much of the landscape was irrevocably altered. Although the Laysan albatross survived, other species unique and endemic to Laysan Island can now only be found in collections like those of Rothschild, most of which was sold to the American Museum of Natural History in 1932.
Today new threats face the world’s seabirds. Caught accidentally by fishing hooks and tangled in nets, albatross species worldwide have experienced devastating population declines. Because albatrosses lay only one egg each year, or sometimes every other year, keeping up with the estimated 100,000 deaths per year in fishing gear is simply not feasible. Nineteen of the 22 species of albatross are considered at risk of extinction.
Fortunately, there are some practical solutions and many fisheries—including all fisheries in the U.S. (under mandate)—have adopted techniques and devices to prevent and mitigate albatross deaths.
Perhaps the greatest modern threat to Laysan albatross is plastic trash. Even on the remote beaches of Midway Atoll or Laysan Island you will find objects all too familiar: toothbrushes, shampoo bottle caps, and disposable cigarette lighters, all to be found hundreds of miles from the nearest convenience store. These items are brought by wind and tides, and perhaps more disturbingly, brought by foraging albatrosses to feed their hungry chicks.
Where does all this debris come from, and how does it get here? There are multiple sources. Some comes from cargo, accidentally spilled from container ships. Then there’s fishing gear, abandoned or discarded. Most likely it’s trash that has been carelessly disposed of: litter tossed in the street, washed by rain into city storm drains, out into our waterways, and finally into the ocean.
In the late 1800s, albatross populations were devastated by egg and feather collecting. Many populations have slowly rebounded, only to face new 21st-century challenges. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, D.C.
Winds and tides carry marine debris across the ocean to regions where currents slow and their floating cargo becomes trapped in a slow, timeless dance around a circulating body of water known as a gyre. The gyre closest to foraging Laysans is the North Pacific Gyre, now infamously known by another name: “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Sadly, it’s far from unique. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating in every square mile of our oceans. You won’t, however, see photos of this ocean-going landfill, as most of the plastic pieces drift unseen below the surface. Over weeks and months, plastic subjected to sunlight begins to photodegrade, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces suspended in the water column. These fragments resemble krill or other small ocean critters (plankton) at the base of the food chain. This faux food is eaten by fish, birds, and young sea turtles with fatal consequences. In some parts of the Pacific, scientists estimate that there are six pieces of plastic for every planktonic animal. Over time, the plastic continues to break down into ever more microscopic pieces, until it is the size of dust particles. And yet it persists. Plastic is forever. Every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence somewhere.
Albatrosses travel hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles in search of food for a chick on the nest. Colorful squid will usually attract their attention. Plastic, apparently, has the same shiny appeal. Both food and non-food items are swallowed and stored in a special upper stomach chamber to be regurgitated days later to feed the chick. Although chicks are able to expel some plastic items, others remain, which may result in loss of appetite (the young bird feels satiated and stops eating), dehydration, weight loss, and blockages in the digestive tract. Scientists estimate that up to 40 percent of the Laysan albatross chicks that die each year have eaten a large volume of plastic and other indigestible items.
Meet Makana!
This Laysan albatross, whose name means “gift” in Hawaiian, is the albatross-in-residence at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. As far as we know, she’s the only one at any zoo or aquarium in the world right now, and certainly the only one in North America. When the aquarium learned that the injured seabird was in need of a home (and faced euthanasia if she didn’t find one), staff immediately responded that they would gladly take her in. With a mission “to inspire conservation of the oceans” at the heart of everything it does, the Monterey Bay Aquarium seemed a natural destination for the young seabird. Today she serves as an ambassador for her species and inspires aquarium visitors to want to protect albatross and all ocean wildlife from the dangers posed by plastic litter.
Unlike the aquarium’s other presenter-led interpretive programs involving live animals, the daily “Makana show” is based entirely on her goodwill and willingness to leave her private quarters behind the scenes. Through positive reinforcement, she follows a target to a custom-designed cart used as a platform for her daily program. She is generally obliging, having fostered a strong connection with the “Makana team” who work regularly with her, provide her meals and daily enrichments, and even occasionally partner with her in a mating dance!
Visitors are generally amazed at how calmly and serenely she stands on her cart. She is clearly untethered and free to leave if she chooses. However, she has no natural fear of humans and the aquarium’s husbandry staff has worked with her, using enrichments and reward, to help her become accustomed to the attentions of a small crowd of admirers.
Though most of us have heard of albatross and perhaps seen photos or video, it doesn’t follow that visitors will immediately realize they are looking at a very special bird indeed. (Some may think she’s nothing more than an “oversized seagull.”) The interpretation, therefore, has to address many aspects: who she is, how she came to be here, and why she is such an important ambassador for her species.
Makana’s body has a number of stories to tell about her adaptations to a life spent almost entirely at sea. Visitors are asked if her black “eye shadow” reminds them of any of their sporting heroes. Many know that black under the eye helps baseball and football players see better when playing in the glare of the sun. It’s easy to see how Makana’s charcoal eye makeup will be helpful during the many hours she spends on and over the sun-kissed waters of the Pacific. A careful look at Makana’s long and sharply hooked beak, adept at snaring a slippery squid, reveals a clever feature known as a tubenose—specialized nasal plumbing that allows albatrosses to drink salt water and excrete the excess salt. It’s an essential adaptation for a bird that will not make landfall for up to five years from the time it first fledges.
Simple props also aid in the story-telling. A measuring tape held aloft by two volunteers from the audience illustrates the full extent of the Laysan wingspan. Pretty impressive at six feet! We hope, eventually, that Makana will spread her wings on cue. For now she sits smugly on her cart, looking down her tubenoses at us thinking, “overgrown seagull, indeed!”
A second tape stretches out to 12 feet and shows how southern hemisphere albatrosses such as the wandering and royal albatross are the record holders for wingspan. For us humans, the idea of arms outstretched to six feet is pretty awe-inspiring. We imagine holding out our arms for even a few minutes and wonder at a bird that can glide for days at a time without tiring. To learn that an albatross’s heartbeat in flight is virtually no faster than when resting, it seems to defy belief!
Makana inspires us to ponder: When we throw things “away,” where is away? Did we imagine “away” was a trip to Hawai’i, to become the next meal for a hungry albatross? Of course not.
To foster ocean stewardship we have to reach beyond the things we can touch and see, to immerse ourselves in a world alien to our species and to connect with creatures whose lives seldom seem to touch our own—creatures like Makana and her kin, whom we may never meet. Except in our hearts. In our hearts we need to know that whales larger than any dinosaur still roam the oceans. That sharks, which pre-date forests, are still prowling the depths in search of their next meal. Sea turtles, survivors from the Mesozoic era still cross oceans as they have done for millennia; silent, seldom seen, more ancient than the mountains we think of as old, and yet which, in the eye of the sea turtle, are as young as saplings just grown from seed.
We don’t always need to visit a wild place to be glad that it exists just for its own sake and for the sake of animals that pass through or call it home. Stewardship can begin in our own home. We can touch the lives of those we may never see, with no voice to thank us. But future generations will. For them we can preserve and restore the diversity and richness of our planet through the simple actions that we take each and every day. As simple as a re-usable tote bag, our own coffee mug to-go, and a little thought and consideration on how our daily lives impact this ocean planet that we and so many others call home.
Alison Barratt is the communications associate manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Center for the Future of the Oceans. To learn more visit www.montereybayaquarium.org/plastics and www.oceanaction.org.
The Problem with Plastic
by Alison Barratt
Steven Siegel/Marine Photobank
Stretching away from Hawai’i like pearls in the Pacific blue are the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. They’re a chain of small volcanic atolls, seamounts, and islands, uninhabited by humans, but home to spectacular breeding colonies of one of our planet’s greatest ocean wanderers—the albatross.
Two of the 22 species of albatross nest here, on U.S. soil. Three-quarters of the world’s endangered black-footed albatross and 90 percent of the global population of Laysan albatross make an annual and brief pilgrimage to these remote isles. A select few choose to nest in urban Hawaiian “mainland” neighborhoods, and the “gooney birds,” as they are affectionately known, can be seen using local roads as runways for takeoff. However, the vast majority prefer the isolation of Laysan and Midway, 1,000 miles from civilization.
In 1891, the first ornithologists stepped onto the shores of an avian paradise, Laysan Island, to catalog and collect on behalf of Walter Rothschild of the international banking dynasty. Rothschild had a lifelong passion for zoology and frequently funded expeditions around the world to collect specimens. He was also a well-known eccentric who drove around London in a carriage pulled by zebras.
The resulting publication, The Avifauna of Laysan in 1893, included a series of photographic plates which, in the words of the expedition’s leader, “illustrates much better the immense numbers of this bird, and its utter fearlessness and tameness, than any description possibly could.” He also noted, sadly, their inherent vulnerability, “albatross…extremely foolish and fearless; can be caught with the hands.”
Although albatrosses have historically selected remote and human-free nesting sites, they have (unfortunately) not remained free from human impact. Vast colonies like the one seen by these early explorers no longer exist. In the United States, as elsewhere, albatross colonies have been subjected to the depredations of introduced predators and non-native species, egg raiding, feather collecting, and guano mining (as well as the construction of roads, railroads, and other structures needed to better exploit these resources).
Today, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands have national monument status and the waters that surround them are part of one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. Though efforts have been made to reverse some of man’s impacts, such as eradication of pests and predators, much of the landscape was irrevocably altered. Although the Laysan albatross survived, other species unique and endemic to Laysan Island can now only be found in collections like those of Rothschild, most of which was sold to the American Museum of Natural History in 1932.
Today new threats face the world’s seabirds. Caught accidentally by fishing hooks and tangled in nets, albatross species worldwide have experienced devastating population declines. Because albatrosses lay only one egg each year, or sometimes every other year, keeping up with the estimated 100,000 deaths per year in fishing gear is simply not feasible. Nineteen of the 22 species of albatross are considered at risk of extinction.
Fortunately, there are some practical solutions and many fisheries—including all fisheries in the U.S. (under mandate)—have adopted techniques and devices to prevent and mitigate albatross deaths.
Perhaps the greatest modern threat to Laysan albatross is plastic trash. Even on the remote beaches of Midway Atoll or Laysan Island you will find objects all too familiar: toothbrushes, shampoo bottle caps, and disposable cigarette lighters, all to be found hundreds of miles from the nearest convenience store. These items are brought by wind and tides, and perhaps more disturbingly, brought by foraging albatrosses to feed their hungry chicks.
Where does all this debris come from, and how does it get here? There are multiple sources. Some comes from cargo, accidentally spilled from container ships. Then there’s fishing gear, abandoned or discarded. Most likely it’s trash that has been carelessly disposed of: litter tossed in the street, washed by rain into city storm drains, out into our waterways, and finally into the ocean.
In the late 1800s, albatross populations were devastated by egg and feather collecting. Many populations have slowly rebounded, only to face new 21st-century challenges. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, D.C.
Winds and tides carry marine debris across the ocean to regions where currents slow and their floating cargo becomes trapped in a slow, timeless dance around a circulating body of water known as a gyre. The gyre closest to foraging Laysans is the North Pacific Gyre, now infamously known by another name: “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Sadly, it’s far from unique. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating in every square mile of our oceans. You won’t, however, see photos of this ocean-going landfill, as most of the plastic pieces drift unseen below the surface. Over weeks and months, plastic subjected to sunlight begins to photodegrade, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces suspended in the water column. These fragments resemble krill or other small ocean critters (plankton) at the base of the food chain. This faux food is eaten by fish, birds, and young sea turtles with fatal consequences. In some parts of the Pacific, scientists estimate that there are six pieces of plastic for every planktonic animal. Over time, the plastic continues to break down into ever more microscopic pieces, until it is the size of dust particles. And yet it persists. Plastic is forever. Every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence somewhere.
Albatrosses travel hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles in search of food for a chick on the nest. Colorful squid will usually attract their attention. Plastic, apparently, has the same shiny appeal. Both food and non-food items are swallowed and stored in a special upper stomach chamber to be regurgitated days later to feed the chick. Although chicks are able to expel some plastic items, others remain, which may result in loss of appetite (the young bird feels satiated and stops eating), dehydration, weight loss, and blockages in the digestive tract. Scientists estimate that up to 40 percent of the Laysan albatross chicks that die each year have eaten a large volume of plastic and other indigestible items.
Meet Makana!
This Laysan albatross, whose name means “gift” in Hawaiian, is the albatross-in-residence at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. As far as we know, she’s the only one at any zoo or aquarium in the world right now, and certainly the only one in North America. When the aquarium learned that the injured seabird was in need of a home (and faced euthanasia if she didn’t find one), staff immediately responded that they would gladly take her in. With a mission “to inspire conservation of the oceans” at the heart of everything it does, the Monterey Bay Aquarium seemed a natural destination for the young seabird. Today she serves as an ambassador for her species and inspires aquarium visitors to want to protect albatross and all ocean wildlife from the dangers posed by plastic litter.
Unlike the aquarium’s other presenter-led interpretive programs involving live animals, the daily “Makana show” is based entirely on her goodwill and willingness to leave her private quarters behind the scenes. Through positive reinforcement, she follows a target to a custom-designed cart used as a platform for her daily program. She is generally obliging, having fostered a strong connection with the “Makana team” who work regularly with her, provide her meals and daily enrichments, and even occasionally partner with her in a mating dance!
Visitors are generally amazed at how calmly and serenely she stands on her cart. She is clearly untethered and free to leave if she chooses. However, she has no natural fear of humans and the aquarium’s husbandry staff has worked with her, using enrichments and reward, to help her become accustomed to the attentions of a small crowd of admirers.
Though most of us have heard of albatross and perhaps seen photos or video, it doesn’t follow that visitors will immediately realize they are looking at a very special bird indeed. (Some may think she’s nothing more than an “oversized seagull.”) The interpretation, therefore, has to address many aspects: who she is, how she came to be here, and why she is such an important ambassador for her species.
Makana’s body has a number of stories to tell about her adaptations to a life spent almost entirely at sea. Visitors are asked if her black “eye shadow” reminds them of any of their sporting heroes. Many know that black under the eye helps baseball and football players see better when playing in the glare of the sun. It’s easy to see how Makana’s charcoal eye makeup will be helpful during the many hours she spends on and over the sun-kissed waters of the Pacific. A careful look at Makana’s long and sharply hooked beak, adept at snaring a slippery squid, reveals a clever feature known as a tubenose—specialized nasal plumbing that allows albatrosses to drink salt water and excrete the excess salt. It’s an essential adaptation for a bird that will not make landfall for up to five years from the time it first fledges.
Simple props also aid in the story-telling. A measuring tape held aloft by two volunteers from the audience illustrates the full extent of the Laysan wingspan. Pretty impressive at six feet! We hope, eventually, that Makana will spread her wings on cue. For now she sits smugly on her cart, looking down her tubenoses at us thinking, “overgrown seagull, indeed!”
A second tape stretches out to 12 feet and shows how southern hemisphere albatrosses such as the wandering and royal albatross are the record holders for wingspan. For us humans, the idea of arms outstretched to six feet is pretty awe-inspiring. We imagine holding out our arms for even a few minutes and wonder at a bird that can glide for days at a time without tiring. To learn that an albatross’s heartbeat in flight is virtually no faster than when resting, it seems to defy belief!
Makana inspires us to ponder: When we throw things “away,” where is away? Did we imagine “away” was a trip to Hawai’i, to become the next meal for a hungry albatross? Of course not.
To foster ocean stewardship we have to reach beyond the things we can touch and see, to immerse ourselves in a world alien to our species and to connect with creatures whose lives seldom seem to touch our own—creatures like Makana and her kin, whom we may never meet. Except in our hearts. In our hearts we need to know that whales larger than any dinosaur still roam the oceans. That sharks, which pre-date forests, are still prowling the depths in search of their next meal. Sea turtles, survivors from the Mesozoic era still cross oceans as they have done for millennia; silent, seldom seen, more ancient than the mountains we think of as old, and yet which, in the eye of the sea turtle, are as young as saplings just grown from seed.
We don’t always need to visit a wild place to be glad that it exists just for its own sake and for the sake of animals that pass through or call it home. Stewardship can begin in our own home. We can touch the lives of those we may never see, with no voice to thank us. But future generations will. For them we can preserve and restore the diversity and richness of our planet through the simple actions that we take each and every day. As simple as a re-usable tote bag, our own coffee mug to-go, and a little thought and consideration on how our daily lives impact this ocean planet that we and so many others call home.
Alison Barratt is the communications associate manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Center for the Future of the Oceans. To learn more visit www.montereybayaquarium.org/plastics and www.oceanaction.org.
Posted in Commentaries, Stewardship of the Oceans
Tags: albatross, American Museum of Natural History, black-footed albatross, egg raiding, feather collecting, fisheries, guano mining, Hawai'i, Laysan, Laysan albatross, Laysan Island, London, Makana, Midway Atoll, Monterey Bay Aquarium, North Pacific Gyre, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Pacific, plastic litter, plastic trash, population declines, predators, seabirds, The Avifauna of Laysan, tubenose, United Nations Environment Programme, United States, volcanic atolls, Walter Rothschild, wingspan, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”