PORT TOWNSEND — Author and seabird expert Peter Harrison will present a lecture on albatrosses this Sunday as a part of the Port Townsend Marine Science Center’s Future of Oceans series.
“I love them, they are without a doubt the most interesting of all seabirds,” Harrison said.
The free lecture will take place at 3 p.m. in Wheeler Hall at Fort Worden, 25 Eisenhower Ave.
Harrison describes Albatrosses as the monarchs of the bird world.
“When people first see albatrosses, they are normally just stunned by the size of them, to start with,” Harrison said. “At sea, it’s often hard to find anything to measure them against because we’ve got nothing out there, no telephone kiosk, no cars. When you see these birds up close, they really are quite something. ”
The larger species of albatrosses can have wing spans of 11 or 12 feet, Harrison said. The smaller species are still large, around 6 feet, he added.
Harrison said he has a banner of one of his photos blown up to actual size to show people how large an albatross is.
“I think this will surprise people,” he said. “When they look at a bird and it really is 11 feet across.”
Albatrosses make up 22 of the around 11,000 bird species, Harrison said. They are distinguished by their divided nostrils.
Three of the species are present in the Pacific Northwest — the black-footed albatross, the laysan albatross and one of the rarest birds in the world, the short-tailed albatross, Harrison said.
They are the longest lived of all birds, Harrison said.
“These birds live as long as we do,” Harrison explained. “I am 78 years of age and there’s a laysan albatross, on Midway Island at the moment, perhaps the most celebrated bird in the world, she’s called Wisdom. She is sitting and nursing her 38th chick. She nests once every 2 years. She’s the same age as I am.”
In birding terms, albatrosses are monogamous, Harrison said. They can divorce or be separated by death, he said. Wisdom has had three to four husbands, he added.
“They’ll be together for 15, 20, 30 years,” Harrison said. “As long as they’re successful, they come back to each other. They have the same nest each year, so they meet up at the nest, it’s the nest which keeps them as a pair.”
If one dies or the pair are unsuccessful in reproduction for several years in a row, they divorce and join the gam.
“A gathering of unpaired albatrosses,” Harrison said. “They’ll work out who goes to who and they’ll start their breeding again.”
Following divorce, the birds may not succeed in breeding for several years, effected by grief, Harrison said.
In their long lives, albatrosses circumnavigate the globe many times, Harrison said.
“We had some transponders put on the legs of various albatross species,” he said. “We had a gray headed albatross circumnavigate the ocean in the southern ocean in 42 days.”
A northern royal albatross holds the record for flight in a single day, flying over 1,000 miles in a day.
The normal wandering albatross leaves it’s nest to feed and gather food for its chick for more than 15 days, flying 8,000 to 15,000 kilometers, Harrison said.
“That really is the most itinerant life form on the face of the planet,” he said.
Abandoned by their parents, hunger will compel young albatrosses to go to sea, Harrison said. In the first year alone, they will fly around 150,000 miles.
“The average wandering albatross makes at least eight round trip journeys to the moon and back,” Harrison said.
Albatrosses and seabirds more generally are the most threatened of any birds, Harrison said. Of the 22 species of Albatrosses, 17 are under threat of early extinction, he added.
“We have lots of mortality in albatrosses because of their association with commercial fishing,” he said.
The intrusion of rodents on breeding ground islands also presents a major threat, Harrison said.
“The biggest threat at the moment, to our seabirds, is the invasion of their breeding islands,” Harrison said. “On Marion Island in the Indian Ocean, the common house mouse was introduced there about 200 years ago.”
Marion Island is approximately 1,242 miles south of the African continent, Harrison said. Climate change has made for dryer and warmer summers and winters, allowing the mice to breed at higher rates.
“Because there’s nothing for them to eat, they’ve turned into carnivorous mice,” Harrison said. “You have a small house mouse which now takes on an albatross. The albatross has no defense, it didn’t have to have this defense, there were no such things as rodents on oceanic islands, they can’t swim 2,000 kilometers.”
The mice climb the albatrosses, more than 1,000 times the size of the mice, sitting on their heads, Harrison said.
“They literally eat the albatrosses,” he said. “Through the skull. We’re losing thousands upon thousands.”
These mice will also eat their way in through the ribs, entering the breast chambers of the enormous birds, eating them from the inside out, Harrison said. These rodents present the same threat to other seabirds as well, he added.
Harrison was instrumentally involved in a successful multi-year, multi-phase rodent eradication project on South Georgia Island, he said.
Discovered by British explorer James Cook in 1775, the island went through a period of exploitation when word spread of the island’s resources, whales and seals among other things, Harrison said.
“During that period of exploitation, the mice and rats were introduced,” Harrison said. “In the 1980s, the island was overrun with rats and seabirds were in absolute catastrophic fall, very, very few of them left. This was an island that could support 70 to 80 million seabirds.”
The successful eradication took coating the entire island with rodenticide, or rat poison, twice in the space of a month from a fleet of helicopters.
The island has been rat free for the last eight or nine years, Harrison said.
Harrison said a similar project is in the fundraising phase for Marion Island, but the projects are expensive, requiring a fleet of helicopters, several off-shore ships, and 700 tons of rodenticide.
Learn about the mouse-free conservation effort for Marion Island at the following link, https://mousefreemarion.org/.
The proliferation of plastics in the oceans also presents a threat to the birds, Harrison said.
“I can’t imagine a world without albatrosses,” he said. “A world without albatrosses would be like a life without laughter.”
Though the event does not require payment, the Marine Science Center (PTMSC) will accept donations.
As of March 1, the whole of the Fort Worden property requires a Discovery Pass to park. Attendees can purchase a pass from kiosks around the park or visit the parks main office. For attendees without passes, parking volunteers in reflective vests will have event-only passes.
As a conservationist, Harrison has been recognized with multiple awards including a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) recognition from Queen Elizabeth II and a Conservation Gold Medal from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Harrison received an Eisenmann Medal for Excellence in Ornithology from the New York Linnaean Society.
Harrison has authored over a dozen books including 2021’s “SEABIRDS: The New Identification Guide”. The book, which includes more than 3,800 full-color figures, was illustrated by Harrison, according to the books page on his website. Copy’s of “SEABIRDS” will be available for purchase Sunday.
________
Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com
