The Laysan Albatross is best known for its gliding flight, awkward landings, and elaborate courtship rituals. These birds spend nearly half the year at sea, not touching land until breeding season. Though large for a seabird, the Laysan is small for an albatross. They may live more than 40 years. These birds are named for Laysan, one of their Hawaiian island breeding colonies.

Most Laysans breed on islands within the Hawaiian archipelago, including Kauai; more than half select Midway Island as their breeding colony. The birds then disperse into the North Pacific Ocean from July to November. Non-breeding Laysans concentrate near the Aleutians and in the Bering Sea. In the mid-1980s, a new colony was found on Guadalupe Island off central Baja, California; others colonies now exist on Japan's Bonin Islands, and on several islands off the coast of western Mexican—a significant range extension.

Laysan populations have expanded both in range and numbers on Midway, Laysan, and French Frigate Shoals in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. In 1922 there were 5,000 Laysans on Midway; by 1992, there were 200,000 breeding pairs. However, high mortality rates have led the Laysan Albatross to be listed as vulnerable to extinction by the World Conservation Union.

Japanese feather hunters decimated many Laysan colonies at the turn of the century. Colonies at Volcano, Wake, and Marcus Islands have never recovered. Between 1958 and 1964, thousands of albatross were killed by collisions with antenna towers and aircraft strikes during landings and take-offs at Midway. Tens of thousands of albatross were intentionally killed in order to reduce such collisions. Today, eggs and birds continue to be removed at Hawaiian island airfields, in order to discourage nesting and ensure aircraft safety. On land, introduced predators, and lead poisoning from abandoned military buildings on Midway kills thousands of Laysans annually. At sea, the species is vulnerable to oil pollution, and the ingestion of floating plastics; tens of thousands also die in gill-nets, drift nets, and long-line fishhooks annually. Alternative long-line fishing techniques now being developed include weighing lines down, setting them at night, and using "screamer lines" to scare birds away.

Another beneficial human activity—the importing of topsoil and grass to Midway's Sand Island—has stabilized the sand dunes and increased albatross habitat. This coupled with the diminished human presence on Midway have led to increased Laysan populations there. At Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge on Kauai, protection by fencing and wildlife personnel has helped establish a breeding Laysan colony.

Join Save the Albatross, a campaign of Bird Life International (www.birdlife.org) working to develop viable alternatives to the long-line fish hooks that kill 100,000 albatross annually: www.savethealbatross.net

 

Join beach cleanups in your area. Trash that enters the ocean may end up in the stomachs of albatross chicks via parental regurgitation, causing death. Properly discarding of debris, particularly plastic, will prevent seabirds from eating it.

 

Don't discard used oil into city sewers or municipal water supplies. It can end up in the ocean where albatross rest and feed; if their feathers become oiled, the birds are no longer waterproof and cannot survive.

 

Never let balloons drift off; albatross and other seabirds can become entangled in the strings, and marine mammals can mistake the balloons for food.

 

Cut up monofilament fishing line, which can entangle coastal birds, prior to discarding it.

 

Learn about Island Conservation's many projects to remove introduced predators and improve seabird habitat: http://www.islandconservation.org.

 

Remain aware of local, regional, and federal land management decisions, particularly those that affect our wetlands. 

 

Visit our resources page for more information about this species.

Whittow, G. Causey. 1993. Laysan Albatross (Diomedea immutabilis). In The Birds of North America, No. 66 (A. Poole and F. Gill, Eds.). Philadelphia: The Academy of Natural Sciences; Washington, D.C.: The American Ornithologists' Union.

 

Kaufman, Kenn. Lives of North American Birds. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 1996

 

Safina, Carl. Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2002.

 

Sibley, David Allen. The Sibley Guide to Birds. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 2000