How same-sex albatross couple captured hearts
A pair of New Zealand albatrosses in a same-sex partnership have captured the hearts of Sir David Attenborough fans, going viral after a clip of their courtship aired in Britain.
But new research on the Antipodean Albatross/toroa shows the outlook for the endangered bird remains bleak, likely extinct within 20-30 years.
At least 2% of the population are lost each year in fatal encounters with commercial fishing vessels. But that number is just the tip of the iceberg – because most deaths on the high seas go unreported. A suspected 2300 die each year.
Kath Walker and Graeme Elliot have spent up to 30 summers on the wave-lashed Antipodes Islands researching New Zealand’s most endangered seabird. The majestic ocean wanderer only breeds there and further south on Campbell Island. Earlier this year, they were accompanied by the BBC crew shooting Frozen Planet II.
The Department of Conservation scientists found the number nesting in 2022 across the Antipodes was estimated to be 2927 pairs, the second lowest ever recorded.
Since 2020, the scientists have fitted more than 150 trackers to the birds. One of the tracked males died in a Chinese longlining vessel in the first year.
Last year, between May and August, the transmitters of three juveniles stopped close to pelagic long line vessels, which suggests they were caught. The bands of a tagged juvenile and a 25-year-old female were also recovered from a Taiwanese longliner. The birds were killed in the same fortnight in June.
By the end of July this year, 17 of 40 stopped transmitting.
Same-sex romances are becoming more prevalent in the albatross community on the Antipodes, as females outnumber males.
A episode of the BBC’s Frozen Planet II, which aired in Britain last month, featured a pair of young male albatrosses finding romance. Sir David narrates, attributing the blame for the decline in the population of females to commercial fishing practices in their feeding grounds.
The series, which airs in New Zealand on TVNZ early next year, is expected to reach 1 billion viewers.