LOVE ON MIDWAY ATOLL Rare albatross finds mate

History is in the making at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. This time it is not about a battle, but a love affair between two very rare albatross the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hopes will produce an offspring.

An 18-year-old female short-tailed albatross has attracted attention for years on Midway Atoll as she returns every year during the nesting season in search of a mate. Normally she is greeted by thousands of the smaller laysan and black-footed albatross. On Nov. 17 someone more her size appeared, a male “golden gooney”.

The male short-tailed albatross landed about 150 hundred yards from the female and was obviously interested in trying to mate with albatross located close by.

After several days of waiting in hopes they would find each other, Refuge Manager Rob Shallenberger assisted the effort by moving the male within 40 feet of the female. About an hour later they were involved in a dynamic dancing ritual.

“Unfortunately, the male has now returned back to his original spot, and although the female has not been sighted the past few days there a possibility she is busy feeding to help her body produce an egg,” said Mr. Shallenberger.

“Just the fact they danced and possibly mated is significant. These massive seabirds have a 7 l./2 foot wing span and stand 3 and 1/2 feet tall. They are from an extremely small worldwide population with breeding restricted to two remote islands –– Torishima, Minami-kojima in Japan. Only one other time in 1993 a short-tailed of the opposite sex displayed with Midway’s lone female.”

“These two definitely stand out in the crowd. Like their cousins, they deliver an almost comical, but much louder, distinguishable, deep-throated “mooing” sound as part of their mating ritual,” said Mr. Shallenberger.

The female has laid an infertile egg every other year for the past six years. The good news is she is due to lay another this winter. Biologists are keeping their fingers crossed that the full moon and a stroke of luck produces a fertile egg. If albatross survived the first four to eight years of their life, the adolescents usually come back to the same island, arriving very close to the same rearing site to find a mate for life. They are ready to breed around age six.

“The current population is so low that the remote possibility of a successful union of these birds on Midway is exciting,” commented Robert Smith, Pacific Islands Ecoregion manager. “This species is on the comeback from a population thought to be extinct in 1949. Fortunately, weathermen stationed on Torishima in 1951 discovered a small pocket of ten birds, today there at least 230 breeding pairs.”

In addition to their home island in Japan, short-tailed albatrosses fly across the Pacific Ocean south to the northwest Hawaiian islands, north to the Aleutian Chain, west to the Asian coast, east to the coast of North America, and in the Bering Sea.

They have been listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act since the Act was passed in 1973. However, when the U.S. and foreign endangered species lists were combined an administrative error resulted in protection throughout its range except in the U.S. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in the midst of correcting the error.

Breeding habitat and future survival of the species are threatened by volcanic activity and monsoon rains on Torishima Island, and by disputed ownership of Minami- kojima Island. Other deaths are caused by longline fishing, plastics pollution and oil spills.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been working extensively with the fishing industry and the National Marine Fisheries Service to minimize effects of longline fishing on the short-tailed albatross and other migratory seabirds.