Sailing the extraordinary flightpath of the albatross

Like a free spirit, a wandering albatross, never once exerting a wingbeat, skimmed into view above the cobalt-blue swell. With the pressure uplift of a wave crest, it rose high until adjacent to the Diana’s stern. I scrambled for my camera. 

I was on an epic sea voyage across the South Atlantic from Cape Town to Cape Horn via Antarctica. This was a repositioning cruise, taking the Diana from her Arctic season to begin operations in Antarctica for the austral summer season. This semi-circumnavigation of the Southern Hemisphere had taken us into the flight path of the most iconic bird on Earth, the albatross, eulogised for its mystical qualities in literature and poetry and lauded for its superpower abilities.

But they can be devilishly hard to photograph in the forceful winds that drive their balletic flight and with a rocking ship. This wandering albatross, the largest of the Procellariiformes (tubenose) order, briefly hung mid-air before shearing away at speed, dynamic soaring, they call it, using the wind gradient to accelerate fast towards our bow. I missed my shot, but there would be other chances as it would fly alongside our ship for most of the day.

On past voyages down to Antarctica, I recalled albatrosses being bit part players. Never ignored, of course, because when passengers first experience the huge size of these seabirds, it is an unforgettable sight. Typically, they will appear within hours of departing Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego as they latch onto the ships bound for Antarctica. More often than not, they are black-browed albatross. Then, for two days sailing down the Drake Passage, they’re a constant presence until Antarctica’s arrival, when they’re somewhat left behind amid the frozen continent’s ADS-inducing wildlife spectacle, not least its showstopper penguins. They’re also not commonly seen down there as they nest on remoter islands strung around the globe in the zone of the roaring forties and furious fifties.

On this twenty-day voyage, however, crossing the South Atlantic, they would take the centre show as the Diana sailed via two internationally important nesting islands: Tristan da Cunha and South Georgia. During five days of empty ocean sailing west from Cape Town to Tristan, the world’s remotest inhabited island, I never saw another ship on the horizon. With so little sea traffic, it didn’t take long for two of the rarest species to home in on our vessel: the Atlantic yellow-nosed and Tristan albatrosses. Having seen them so infrequently, they’re not easily distinguishable to even our expert expedition crew onboard, and they tax identification during daily citizen science eBird surveys, which help to map and quantify the ocean’s seabirds.  It’s made more complicated by the fact that the Tristan variety is part of the wandering albatross family, which are differentiated from each other by subtle morphological characteristics and sometimes just provenance.

The first Tristan albatrosses, with outstretched 3-metre-wide wingspans, followed us for days, approaching Tristan da Cunha. “They’re either using the turbulence the ship creates to draught all the way to Tristan da Cunha where they breed or can smell the barbecuing salmon of the lunchtime grill,” said Emil Rasmussen, our Danish ornithologist. 

It breeds on two of the outer uninhabited islands of Tristan, Gough and Inaccessible, but ranges between South Africa and Argentina. Like all wanderers, it is hard to differentiate, especially from the Southern Royal albatross, because its plumage has a great variety of patterning. We scan close-up photographs to be sure, looking for an orange cheek marking and white wing patch to confirm them.

There are thought to be 22 species of the albatross Diomedeida family, said Emil, during one of many natural history lectures onboard. “These are the great albatrosses, like the wanderers with wingspans 2.5-3.5metres, the North Pacific species, mollymawks, which are smaller and include black-browed and Atlantic yellow-nose, and finally, the sooty albatrosses,” he categorised. 

Taxonomy aside, what he describes is a bird with true superpowers. A species that spends much of its life on the wing, able to circumnavigate the globe. How does they navigate vast distances back to their natal colony to breed? Solar orientation, wind patterns, and olfactory smell to find prey? Emil explains that its protruding nasal passages, hence their moniker ‘tubenoses’, are not just used to excrete salt but also function to measure windspeed velocity. One wandering albatross was recorded as having undertaken a journey of 6000 kilometres in 12 days.

He says they may not touch land for years and likely take thousands of micro-naps on the wing, keeping one hemisphere of the brain alert. They scavenge, as they are poor divers, small squid, jellyfish, and krill, and are one of the longest-lived animals on the planet. It was reported recently that an albatross tagged back in 1951 called Wisdom had just laid an egg at the age of 73 in Hawaii. They lay just one egg, typically in cycles biannually, and remain together for life as pairs, greeting each other with elaborate courtship dances.

“They’ve always been enigmatic to sailors,” added Emil. “Sometimes assumed as the souls of dead sailors and bringers of wind”. It was believed killing one brought bad luck, hence the phrase ‘albatross around the neck’. However, such superstitions have not halted humanity from impacting them greatly.

Fifteen albatross species are now considered globally threatened, including the Tristan, with the main threats becoming snagged during the merciless pursuit of longlining behind deep-sea trawlers, as well as ingesting plastic flotsam, and on breeding colonies, the impact of introduced species, such as rats that predate their chicks and eggs. Birdlife International suggested longlining killed over 160,000 seabirds annually with lines that rolled out to 100 kilometres. “Albatross populations are tragically in steep decline, with tens of thousands of birds per year killed by fisheries. This bycatch is completely avoidable, and setting hooks at night is one of the simplest and most effective measures,” Oliver Yates, head of the BirdLife International Marine Programme director, has been quoted as saying.

We made land at Tristan da Cunha, on the main inhabited island, away from the albatross colonies, at the community of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the only settlement for 237 islanders. The quaintly British society lives on a grassy lava extrusion emanating from a vast 2060 metre-high volcano that dominates the island. It last erupted in 1961. We are privileged to land as only six of the 10 ships that called by last season managed to get ashore thanks to a fearsome surrounding Atlantic swell. 

After the obligatory sending a postcard back to Britain from the world’s remotest post office and a swift half of beer in the Albatross Bar, we push ever westwards, another five days onwards towards South Georgia, another British Overseas Territory. This is a rarely sailed stretch of the Atlantic, and soon numerous albatrosses join us: southern royals and, huge snowy albatrosses and sooty albatross who look as if they’ve flown into a coal shuttle. I was so enraptured that I barely thought twice of a sudden juddering in one of the Diana’s two propellor shafts that caused us to slow.

Onboard with a further 1450 nautical miles to go, we start biosecurity preparations for South Georgia - namely, ensuring our outdoor clothing will not introduce alien matter into the island. Likewise, when our ship arrives, it will be inspected by sniffer dogs for rats. South Georgia has undergone a remarkable transformation over the previous two decades from an island pillaged by sealing and the 20th-century whaling industry and overfishing to one well-protected, gaining an oft-quoted moniker of the world's only recovering ecosystem.

Positive conservation is benefiting albatrosses. The island's South Georgia Heritage Trust and the creation of a strictly policed 200-mile Marine Protection Area (MPA) have seen all wildlife flourish, including nesting seabirds. Around its coast, there are thriving breeding colonies of grey-headed, black-browed, and wandering albatrosses feasting on the abundant food provided by the Antarctic convergence zone's fertile currents. The island represents 50% of all grey-headed albatross breeding sites, 12% of black-browed, and 18% of the wanderers. 

As we entered South Georgia's King Edward Bay, Deidre Mitchell, director of the South Georgia Heritage Trust, joined us onboard to explain the work they have been involved with in protecting wildlife. A £10 million habitat restoration programme saw South Georgia declared rat-free in 2018 - sparing the island's birds' eggs and chicks from predation. The South Georgian government has also been working with the fisheries in the MPA and has more-or-less eradicated by-catch of albatross by introducing tori lines, colourful streamers on the longlines to scare albatross away and the practice of fishing at night when they do not feed. 

More recently, in late 2023, a HPAI avian-flu outbreak hit the island and was detected in wandering albatross. But the worst seemed to have passed, and with restrictions lifted for landings, we were able to visit some of the extraordinary wildlife sites. On St Andrews Bay, we stood on the fringe of a colony of 250,000 king penguins, while at Cooper Bay, during a zodiac inflatable ride along the shoreline, we enjoyed macaroni and gentoo penguins and were surrounded by hundreds of giant petrels - a huge dinosaurian-looking seabird not much smaller than albatrosses with a similarly massive flying range.

The plan thereafter was to dogleg south from South Georgia across the Scotia Sea to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. By now, we were experiencing substantial tabular icebergs drifting north from the Weddell Sea's fracturing ice shelves. Anticipation was high. But Diana's captain delivered the bad news that the propellor shaft was unfixable, and we would have to continue due west, straight to Ushuaia. With just one propellor shaft, it was too dangerous to sail down to Antarctica. 

It was then that albatrosses became my salvation. Furore occurred on the Diana as a few guests took to a hunger strike in protest while others wore placards around their necks demanding full refunds. Diana suddenly became international front-page news because of these protests. I could only shake my head and place such actions in the context of Shackleton and the hardships his crew endured with stoicism at their nightmarish misfortune. Of course, it was disappointing to miss the frozen continent, but I found joy retreating to the aft deck along the albatross superhighway ahead and marvelled at their burgeoning numbers during the ship's slow, wounded voyage back to port.

One morning, I opened my curtains, and a grey-headed albatross was flying so close to my balcony that I could've almost touched the bird's wing. On another, several snowy albatrosses joined us - one of the wanderer family with the largest wings of all. A bird recorded to have made three circumnavigations in a year around the Earth. A few days before we reached Ushuaia, during one bird survey, we recorded 19 light-mantled albatross - a smoky grey species with a pronounced eye ring which gives the impression it's always watching you. When we attempted to input the sightings on the eBird app it asked us to check again as this was an irregularly high number of light-mantled. "I've never seen so many together,' said Emil.

The flight of the albatross continued all the way up the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego as we limped back for the propellor repair in Ushuaia. It had been the most unusual voyage. I'd fulfilled two lifelong dreams by crossing the South Atlantic and making Tristan da Cunha. For three weeks, however, in the companionship of the albatross, I'd absorbed their geographic world like never before.