Spirit of Aloha | Features | January/February 2007

Diversions
By: MARGARET A. HAAPOJA

Thinking Outside the Shell

PHOTO: Brenda Zaun, USFWS PHOTO:Brenda Zaun, USFWS

They call him Spot, because he was marked three times with hair dye identifying him as a “cruiser,” a juvenile Lay­san albatross (Phoe­bastria immutabilis) who returned three times to the Paci­fic Missile Range Facility (PMRF) after he was relocated to the Kïlauea Point Na­tional Wildlife Refuge on the opposite side of Kaua‘i. He’s just one of doz­ens of albatrosses captured and transported from the base to the refuge each winter so they won’t pose a strike hazard to pilots. “The birds are programmed to re­turn to the location they fledge from,” says John Burger, PMRF environmental coordinator. “We have been relocating both the nesting and courting adults to the Kïlauea Point Lighthouse area, but understandably that has not been completely successful.”

Now, through a unique partnership, the Kïlauea Point Na­tional Wildlife Refuge (KPNWR), the Wildlife Services com- ­ponent of the Department of Agri­cul­ture’s Animal and Plant Health In­spec­tion Service and the Navy are ex­peri­menting with methods to transfer albatross eggs from PMRF, where 50 to 60 birds nest every year, to the wildlife refuge, where wild­life biologist Brenda Zaun wants to increase the albatross population.

My first exposure to albatrosses came eight years ago when we landed on Midway Atoll in the middle of the night to avoid a collision with the birds. (Mid­way is now part of the North­western Hawaiian Islands National Monument, designated by President George W. Bush in June 2006.) As we stepped off the plane, eerie sounds echoed around us—neighing, whistling, clacking and groan­ing—and the landscape was alive with movement difficult to distinguish in the dark. Nearly half-a-million albatrosses—93 percent of the world’s population—nest on this tiny island 1,200 miles west of Honolulu. Fluffy grey chicks peered up inquisitively from their meager nests, mere depressions in the grass, rocking back and forth like bowling pins. Once they fledge, young albatrosses spend three to four years at sea, never touching land until they return to Midway to breed.

Shot by the ancient mariner in Cole­ridge’s famous poem, the albatross was considered a good luck omen by early sailors. Sometimes called gooney birds because of their awkward antics and clumsy landings, Laysan albatrosses are the largest seabirds in the North Pacific, weighing more than seven pounds, with wingspans of 80 inches. These graceful fliers mate for life and may live as long as 60 years.

Parents share feeding chores and fly hundreds of miles out to sea searching for food, primarily squid that they scoop from the surface of the ocean. They often mistake plastic for squid, and they devour cigarette lighters, pencils, toy tops, combs and toothbrushes, which they regurgitate into their chicks. “Laysan albatrosses ingest more plastic and more types of plastic than any other seabird,” says Heidi Auman, a wildlife biologist who wrote her master’s thesis on plastic ingestion in albatrosses. “Plastic can cause tears in the stomach lining, blockages to the intestine, which can lead to starvation and dehydration.”

Albatrosses didn’t appear on Kaua‘i until about 1977, according to Zaun. “The numbers increased pretty quickly after the refuge was established in 1985,” she says. Today, the population fluctuates, but there are usually about 200 breeding pairs on-island, not in­clud­ing those that try to nest at PMRF. “Dogs are absolutely the worst enemy of albatrosses,” says Zaun, adding that 40 adult albatrosses were killed in 2005, and 16 more last season. “Because seabirds haven’t evolved with mammalian pre­da­tors, they don’t perceive their presence as a danger until it’s too late,” says Zaun. To protect the birds, KPNWR has supplied fencing to private landowners who have nesting albatrosses on their property.

In the midst of the 2004-’05 nesting season, a combination of events resulted in a paradigm shift in the PMRF man­agement plan. The former practice of breaking albatross eggs to reduce the potential for aircraft bird strikes was scrapped. With the support of RADM’s Mike Vitale, commander, Navy Region Hawai‘i, and his staff, PMRF Environ­mental worked be­hind the scenes, teaming with Wildlife Services and KPNWR to find a better way. Deter­mined to save the birds, everyone in­volved went into action.

“I knew we had a certain percentage of infertile eggs at the refuge every year,” Zaun says, “and I could take some of the eggs from MRF and swap them into our nests. It was a race against time. The crew from Wildlife Services doubled staff to locate and transport eggs and hatchlings to Zaun late each afternoon. It was exhausting work, finding and collecting in the remote areas of PMRF, then carefully containing and protecting adult birds, chicks and eggs for the long ride to the other side of the island.

“While they gathered the eggs from PMRF, I would go out and ‘candle’ the eggs here so I would know which ones needed to be replaced,” says Zaun. The timing had to be just right. “It’s best to do it at night, or at least in a dark spot,” she says, “so I brought a heavy blanket from home and put it over my head. I used a flashlight and put it right up to the air sac part of the egg. Movement within the egg indicates its viability. I was doing that until 10 every night.” Soon, Zaun was traveling all over the North Shore candling eggs and finding foster parents for the PMRF eggs. The oper­ation was very successful, with 26 of the relocated eggs and chicks adopted.

To avoid the 11th-hour race in the fol­lowing season, the Navy purchased an incubator, and kept the eggs it found until three weeks before they were ready to hatch. At that point, Wildlife Services brought them to Zaun, and she placed them in nests where she found infertile eggs. The project wasn’t nearly as successful as the previous year; less than half the relocated eggs hatched. Zaun says they’re breaking new ground with their experiment, because no one knows how often an albatross turns its egg or how high the humidity should be in the incubator.

“The best we can determine up to now is that we need to increase the humidity toward the end of incubation to ensure the chick is not dried out in­side and possibly stuck to the membrane inside the shell,” says PMRF’s Burger, who has ob­tained a second incubator for the upcoming albatross nesting season. “If there’s not enough fluid to move around freely, the chick may not be able to hatch.”

This year, Zaun hopes to get a viability determination earlier in the season so they can try switching the eggs sooner. “I think the less time they’re in the incubator, the better off they’re going to be,” she says. “I’m glad that we’re altering what we’ve been doing in the past. We’re maintaining the safety of the people and of the aircraft, but we are also taking into account the safety of the birds here. This new program will help increase our population for years to come.”

MARGARET A. HAAPOJA, who writes often on conservation issues, is currently garden columnist for a Minnesota newspaper. Her stories have appeared in Audubon, Wild Bird, Amer­ican Forests, California Wild and Wildlife Journal..

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