The last dance of the wandering albatross?

19 June, 2025 Long reads

From pink spray paint to light-as-a-feather GPS loggers: the world of albatross tracking has come a long way in the past six decades. But one thing has sadly remained the same – the numbers of these iconic birds is decreasing. In this month’s BAS Long Read, we meet some of the scientists who are working to understand how albatrosses are faring on the remote islands of South Georgia.

It’s early 2003, and seabird ecologist Professor Richard Phillips is working his way along the rugged coastline of Bird Island. He is conducting the annual count of wandering albatross nests on this tiny outpost off South Georgia, a UK Overseas Territory in the southwest Atlantic Ocean around 1,500 km from the Falklands. The albatross are iconic residents of the island and the great voyagers of maritime folklore, with their ability to glide across hundreds of miles of ocean without a single flap of their wings.

Each nest Richard passes represents a breeding pair of these extraordinary birds – each of whom can live for over 60 years, and possess wingspans approaching 3.5 metres. But he faces a conundrum around how to record the results of their daily monitoring of wandering albatrosses:

“In total, we marked 1006 nests,” Richard recalls, “but the standard approach is to correct the number of active nests on 31 January for the proportion that have already failed. This produced a corrected count of 992 pairs and I remember there was a discussion about whether numbers had truly dropped below 1,000 for the first time since researchers started to count nests in 1962.”

In stark contrast, the corrected count in January this year was just 627 nests. This decline is mirrored in two other species also living on the islands – the black-browed and grey-headed albatrosses.

The nest counts at Bird Island provide more than just an indication of population trends: they tell us how well humans are looking after the oceans, the impact of a warming climate, and whether fisheries are being responsibly managed. These numbers are a clear warning that not enough is being done.

Endurance or extinction?

The albatross breeding grounds on South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are of global significance for three albatross species: wandering, black-browed, and grey-headed. While reductions in bird and animal species populations have become the new normal around the world, these numbers are shocking, in part because of the importance of South Georgia as a breeding site, but also because there are simple ways to mitigate the unnecessary killing (bycatch) of albatrosses in fisheries, the largest contributing factor.

Richard is the head of the Higher Predators Group at British Antarctic Survey. For a quarter of a century, he has studied albatrosses and petrels in the southern hemisphere – and his most recent research paper brings together decadal studies of the colonies of wandering, black-browed and grey-headed albatrosses across South Georgia.

The results indicate that although the declines have slowed since 2014, all three species have decreased significantly.

Looking across the South Georgia population, in the last 32-40 years, there has been a 39% decrease in wandering albatrosses to 1,278 breeding pairs; a 46% decline in black-browed albatrosses to just over 55,000 pairs; and a massive 66% reduction in grey-headed albatrosses to 18,500 pairs. This is particularly worrying as South Georgia previously held the third largest, second largest and largest populations, respectively, of these species at any island group.

Dr Sarah Manthorpe, the Scientific Data Manager in the Polar Data Centre at BAS was also involved with the most recent survey, and reflected:

“When you’re on the island, and begin to imagine the numbers of albatrosses that were present decades ago, it reminds you of the responsibility you have to capture data in this moment that can inform conservation efforts.”

Albatrosses are some of the largest flying birds on the planet. They have long lives in stable populations and do not start breeding until they are around 8-12 years old. Black-browed and grey-headed albatrosses produce at most one chick per year, and wandering albatrosses every two years.

These slow life histories mean that any factor which reduces adult survival can drastically impact the population size. It can take decades to recover from losses.

Something fishy going on

Globally, wandering albatrosses are categorised as Vulnerable, black-browed albatrosses as Least Concern and grey-headed albatrosses as Endangered – meaning they are facing a very high risk of extinction – by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). As well as following population trends, ecologists have studied the factors that threaten their survival.

The primary culprit behind this decline is no longer mysterious: it’s fishing gear. Specifically, longline fishing, where the lines with baited hooks stretch for miles across the open ocean. Adult albatrosses dive to grab the baits, and although they mostly succeed in pulling one off the hook, all too often they swallow the hook itself and are dragged underwater to drown. In trawl fisheries, smaller albatrosses feed behind vessels on discards when the catch is being processed and are injured or killed in collisions with the trawl warp and monitoring cables.

Bycatch is by far the largest threat, and it is straightforward to adjust fishing practices to mitigate. Richard reflects on the frustrating situation:

“Avoiding these tragic incidents is not hard. Heavier weights closer to the hook help longlines sink quicker out albatrosses’ reach, streamer lines scare birds away from the backs of vessels, and fishing at night avoids the daylight when albatrosses are most active.

Adopting these methods catches just as many fish while greatly reducing seabird bycatch. Unless they become the standard approaches, albatross numbers will continue to decline, but there is a reluctance in some areas to mandate better practice.”

While other factors contribute to the decline – climate change shifting food sources southward, plastic pollution, and avian flu among them – bycatch remains the most significant and most readily addressable threat.

Putting albatross decline on the map

Modern technology has revolutionised our understanding of albatross movements. Richard and other ecologists now deploy sophisticated tracking devices that reveal albatross and petrel seasonal migrations, feeding habitats and foraging strategies with incredible detail.

In one study, the researchers attached trackers to 40 grey-headed albatross chicks from Bird Island just before they fledged. The data painted a concerning picture: during their first months of independence, these inexperienced birds foraged over areas heavily used by major longline fishing fleets in the southeast Atlantic – areas rarely visited by adults of the same species. After these crucial early months, they travelled further east to less risky areas.

“The study solved a puzzle,” Richard notes. “There were some records of grey-headed albatrosses being caught in tuna longline fisheries – but their origin was not clear. We now know that this is a key hunting area for the South Georgia population.”

In another recent paper involving a global collaboration, Richard and co-authors tracked the year-round movements of 132 adult white-chinned petrels, the most bycaught seabirds in the Southern Ocean. They wanted to compare their at-sea distributions with zones of longline and trawl fishing.

The data showed where and when birds were at greatest potential bycatch risk, including fisheries-overlap hotspots within the High Seas where there are no seabird-bycatch mitigation requirements or where current mitigation regulations need to be strengthened. The work of ecologists like Richard ultimately filters into policy recommendations:

“We strongly recommended the implementation of mandatory best-practice measures to reduce seabird bycatch. We’ve also recommended that there should be monitoring for compliance by independent observers, or tamper-proof cameras on the vessels operating in these regions.”

He continues: “The small local longline fishery at South Georgia has tight regulations on bycatch and all vessels have an onboard observer, so deaths of seabirds are extremely rare. Yet these albatrosses and petrels travel far and wide to forage for their food, and bycatch in other fisheries is driving the population declines. The main barriers are inadequate regulations, and poor monitoring and enforcement of better practices.”

Albatrosses and large petrels are listed under the multilateral Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP), and there has been progress in reducing bycatch rates, particularly within some national waters, but unless conservation efforts are increased elsewhere and in the High Seas the future prospects for these beautiful apex predators remain bleak.

Eyes in the sky

Just as the nesting environment for albatross has changed over the decades, so too have monitoring techniques. While researchers still count nests on foot at accessible sites like Bird Island, emerging technologies offer new possibilities for surveying remote colonies.

“Today at Bird Island, we still use the traditional approach,” explained Richard, “where fieldworkers count on foot as that is the most accurate way to tell breeding and nonbreeding birds apart.”

“Elsewhere at South Georgia, access to many colonies is not possible because the slopes are steep and landings are dangerous in stormy season, and so my colleagues counted nests using a drone. We even have a project that is testing how well we can count the largest species, wandering albatrosses, in high resolution satellite images.”

During the latest survey, Sarah’s role was to test the effectiveness of remote monitoring of albatrosses using unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones.

“Aerial flights using UAV can non-invasively capture information about birds at colonies,” explains Sarah, “and areas that are difficult or dangerous to access on foot or from boat-based surveys now more accessible. UAV imagery is also geo-referenced and able to provide information about other environmental parameters, which makes future work more robust.”

The size and capability of GPS logging has also improved, offering significantly more geographical data on where habitats and fisheries overlap. Richard reflects: “We can now deploy GPS loggers which provide locations of foraging adults to within 10m every 10 minutes for weeks at a time. We can even use a tiny light-level geolocator on a fledgling which is retrieved when it eventually returns; those loggers can provide locations accurate to around 180 km twice a day for five years or more, revealing long-term movements throughout what were formerly called the ‘the lost years’.”

Research has come a long way since the pioneering work on albatrosses by Lance Tickell in the 1960s. He sprayed pink paint on wandering albatrosses and then collected information from vessel crews thousands of kilometres away who reported seeing pink birds. But can all this research effort add up to deliver hope for the future of albatross in South Georgia?

“South Georgia is a magical place,” says Sarah. “Seeing population decline slowing does allow for a little optimism. It suggests that implementing conservation management plans and monitoring can lead to positive changes.”