Short-Tailed Albatross or
Steller’s Albatross

(Phoebastria albatrus)

The story of the short-tailed albatross is inexorably linked with one man, Hiroshi Hasegawa, and his lifelong dedication to a single cause—saving an extraordinarily beautiful and extremely endangered bird from extinction. This bird made its last stand in a remote and almost inaccessible corner of the world—Torishima, an active volcano island that rises in sheer and mostly unscalable cliffs out of the sea, some eleven hundred miles southeast of Tokyo.

I spoke with Hiroshi during my annual visit to Japan in November 2007. I was very excited to meet this extraordinary man. His eyes are bright with love for his work, and for the birds to which he has dedicated his life, and he seems filled with suppressed energy. I longed to go with him to watch the short-tailed albatross—but I must make do with the information he has so generously shared with me.

Growing up in the hilly mountainous area near Fuji, he developed a passion for birding that eventually led to his love for the short-tailed albatross, the largest seabird in the North Pacific. Their long narrow wings, with a span of more than seven feet, enable them to glide effortlessly, low over the ocean, going ashore only during the breeding season between November and March. They are very beautiful; the adult has a white back, golden-yellow plumage on the head, and black-and-white wings. Most distinctive is the bill, which is long and bubblegum pink, tipped with blue.

At one time the short-tailed albatross was common, ranging for miles from Japan to the West Coast of the United States and the Bering Sea and nesting on grassy slopes set among the rocky cliffs of small islands, mostly off Japan. It was their glorious plumage that almost led to their extinction: Between 1897 and 1932, it is estimated that feather hunters clubbed to death at least five million of them on their main breeding grounds on the rugged cliffs of Torishima. By 1900, there were some three hundred feather hunters camped there during the breeding season, and the numbers of short-tailed albatrosses continued to decline. When the hunters heard that the Japanese government, in response to lobbying from ornithologists and conservationists, had agreed to make the island off limits, they organized a final massacre. At the end of the slaughter, no more than fifty individuals remained. And then, in 1939, another volcanic eruption wiped out most of the last nesting sites.

A chick begs its parent for food on Torishima Island. When Hiroshi Hasegawa first set foot on this island in 1977 he found only fifteen struggling chicks among the seventy-one surviving albatrosses—and he knew then that these beautiful birds were on the verge of extinction. (Hiroshi Hasegawa)

At least the few survivors now had legal protection: The Japanese government had listed the short-tailed albatross as a Special National Monument, as well as protecting Torishima Island as a National Monument. But there were very few left to protect—in 1956, an expedition counted only twelve nests. Seventeen years later, British ornithologist Dr. Lance Tickell went to Torishima Island to check on this tiny colony and to band the chicks. On his way back, he stopped to give some lectures in Japan’s Kyoto University. That visit made a deep impression on Hiroshi Hasegawa, then a graduate student majoring in animal ecology. Indeed, it determined his future. If a British ornithologist could get to the remote Torishima Island, in Japanese waters, then surely he, Hiroshi, could somehow get there himself.

He could hardly have set himself a harder task. For one thing, he had no funding. And when he eventually got a place on a fisheries research vessel going to Torishima, the weather was too bad for them to land and he only glimpsed the nesting albatrosses from the ship.

Finally, in 1977, Hiroshi set foot for the first time on Torishima Island. He counted only seventy-one adult and immature birds. Since the short-tailed albatross probably lives to be fifty or sixty years old, some of the adult birds were almost certainly survivors of the 1932 massacre. There were only nineteen chicks among the seventy-one birds—four of them already dead, while the other fifteen died before fledging. Hiroshi knew, then, that these beautiful birds were very, very close to extinction. “I understood,” he told me, “that it was my responsibility, as a Japanese, to bring the species back from the brink.”

For a while, Hiroshi was supported by a fisheries experimental station, but their boat had an annual schedule that was not geared to the breeding season of the albatrosses. He succeeded in getting funding for a few years from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, but the government would not commit to the long-term project that Hiroshi knew was necessary. And so, he told me, he gave up seeking funding from official sources and instead began writing a series of popular articles and children’s books. This brought in sufficient funds to charter boats when he needed them for his albatross work. It was then that he learned “never to copy others’ ideas.” Instead he developed his own vision of a conservation plan.

A Rare Bird and a Rare Man

The journey to the breeding grounds is tough. First comes a long boat ride over the open sea—and there can be horrific storms. Even ashore, all the equipment must be hauled up sheer black volcanic lava, to a height the equivalent of fourteen stories, and then down a four-hundred-foot cliff before arriving at the breeding site. Hiroshi has made this journey two or three times a year for twenty-seven years. All the more remarkable considering that, as he confided to me, he always gets seasick! During the breeding season from early November to late December, Hiroshi counts birds and nests on the island, and observes their behavior. In late March, he returns to put identifying bands on the chicks’ legs. And in June, he sometimes goes back to work on improving the nesting sites, planting grass to stabilize the soil and provide some cover. Gradually, the survival rate of the chicks increased. But in 1987, probably as a result of a fierce typhoon and very heavy rain, there was a massive landslide on Torishima Island, followed by a series of bad mudslides that destroyed some nesting sites. This probably caused increased competition for space with black-footed albatrosses.

Hiroshi realized then that it was desperately important to establish a new nesting colony in another part of the island. He carved life-like decoys (to date he has produced about one hundred), which he placed at the site he had selected. Then, when the adult birds began returning for the breeding season, he played back courtship calls of short-tailed albatross (a method pioneered by Dr. Steve Kress when working with Atlantic puffins). For the first two years, there was no response. Then, for the 1995–1996 breeding season, one pair nested there and successfully reared a chick. No other individuals arrived the next year, nor the one after that, but Hiroshi did not give up. He continued to put out decoys and play calls, year after year, until finally, ten years after the first pair had raised their chick, three more pairs arrived. By the 2006–2007 breeding season, the new colony numbered twenty-four nesting pairs; sixteen chicks were fledged.

Meanwhile the breeding success at the original site gradually improved. In the 1997–1998 season, 129 chicks fledged (67 percent of all those hatched); the following year, 142. And so it went, year after year, until during the 2006–2007 breeding season no less than 231 chicks fledged, and the population of the colony was almost 2,000. One of these is a bird banded by Tickell that Hiroshi has been observing since the start of his study; it successfully reared a chick at the age of thirty-three years.

Threats at Sea

Of course, short-tailed albatrosses—like all the albatross species—face major threats during their months at sea. Many are hooked and drowned on commercial long lines; others get tangled in abandoned fishing gear or swallow plastic debris floating in the ocean. From time to time, they are coated with oil from spills. Hiroshi and other ornithologists tried to raise public awareness. Between 1988 and 1993, a series of TV programs about the plight of the short-tailed albatross was broadcast throughout Japan. In 1993, the short-tailed albatross was listed as endangered in the Japanese Endangered Species Act. And finally, nearly twenty years after beginning his battle to save these birds, Hiroshi was able to secure funding from the Japanese government for both the ongoing habitat improvement at the original breeding site and the establishment of the new breeding site on Torishima Island.

The only other place where short-tailed albatrosses are known to have a nesting colony is on an island located southwest of Torishima. Hiroshi managed to visit this colony in 2001, but because the ownership of these islands is disputed among Japan, China, and Taiwan, it was extremely hard to get access.

A Very Patient Bird

There is also a place within US jurisdiction, the Midway Atoll, where short-tailed albatrosses have attempted to breed—although without success. No more than two individuals have been seen on any one of the atoll’s islands at the same time, only one egg was laid, and there is no record of a hatching! Perhaps these stray short-tailed albatrosses are attracted by the sight or sound of the two million or so black-footed and laysan albatrosses that breed on those islands.

Judy Jacobs, who heads up the US Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan for the short-tailed albatross, told me that one of these stray birds, believed to be a male, “has shown up on Midway’s Eastern Island almost every breeding season since 1999.” In 2000, to encourage a mate to join him, a number of decoys were placed on his island, along with a sound system playing recorded calls from Torishima. But despite these attractions, no other short-tailed albatross appeared, and year after year he waited in vain. Then his luck changed. “This year, just two weeks ago,” Judy wrote in January 2008, “he was joined for the first time by another of his kind—a juvenile.” The patient albatross and his new juvenile companion showed preening and pair-bonding behavior. “So perhaps,” said Judy, “the adult bird’s patience of nine years will finally be rewarded!!” I am longing to find out!

A New Island Home

The most important part of the recovery plan drawn up in 2005 by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with Japanese and Australian scientists, was to establish a new breeding colony in a safe place. In 2002, Torishima volcano had erupted again (it is one of the most active in the area), and although on that occasion it just spewed out ash and smoke—at a time when all albatrosses were out at sea—it was a stark reminder of the danger faced by the still-precarious short-tailed albatross population. It was important to try to establish a new colony on an island that was safe from volcanic activity and one that was accessible for monitoring. After much discussion, and a reconnaissance trip by Japanese scientists, Mukojima Island, one of the Ogasawara Islands about two hundred miles south of Torishima, was selected as a site for the new colony. Short-tailed albatrosses had been recorded breeding there as recently as the 1920s.

Before attempting to translocate precious short-tailed albatross chicks to Mukojima Island, a Japanese team of biologists from Yamashina Institute decided to work out albatross-chick-raising techniques with the non-endangered black-footed albatross species. This exercise was not very successful, but valuable lessons were learned that led to the development of better rearing techniques. So that the following year, when ten non-endangered black-footed albatross chicks were translocated to a specially prepared site on Mukojima Island, all but one of them fledged.

This success gave all those involved the courage to translocate the first precious short-tailed albatross chicks to Mukojima Island. There was a great deal of publicity in anticipation of this event. Fortunately, Judy Jacobs wrote me, things could scarcely have gone better. Ten chicks were transported from Torishima to their new home by helicopter in February 2008. And to the huge relief of everyone, all ten fledged—just a bit earlier than their peers on Torishima Island.

Today new technology is enabling scientists to find out exactly where the young short-tailed albatrosses spend their four to five years at sea after fledging. Twenty young albatrosses were fitted with tracking devices. Some of them flew straight from Torishima to the Bering Sea, traveling some four thousand miles in one month. This is an extraordinary journey, undertaken with no parental guidance, since the adults leave the breeding ground several weeks before the young. Of course it was particularly important to keep track of the birds that fledged from Mukojima. Five of them were equipped with satellite transmitters, as were five from Torishima. In September 2008, I got an update from Judy: All ten, she said, “are now foraging—and doing whatever else young albatrosses do—off the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.” Five from Torishima and five from Mukojima!

Adult short-tailed albatross about to land on Torishima Island. Amazingly, 231 chicks fledged during the 2006–2007 breeding season and the population of the main colony was up to almost 2,000. (Hiroshi Hasegawa)

The recovery plan for the short-tailed albatross, Judy told me, calls for translocations to Mukojima to continue for four more years, in the hope that by the fifth year some of the 2008 fledglings will return to Mukojima as breeding birds. And it is hoped that the decoys and sound system on the island may attract others of the species to also nest there. “It’s a lot of work,” Judy told me, “but very satisfying to play a part in the restoration of this magnificent seabird.”

The “Patron Saint” of the Short-Tailed Albatross

I asked Hiroshi how he felt now that other scientists were actively involved in short-tailed albatross protection. “It makes me very happy,” he said, “that conservation work that I initiated alone by myself more than thirty years ago has now developed into an international joint project to form a new colony.” He will continue to monitor the situation on Torishima Island, and ensure that there are chicks to be translocated to Mukojima. He has also set up the Short-Tailed Albatross Fund to receive contributions from the public. (You will find out more about this fund in “What You Can Do” at the end of this book.)

Hiroshi Hasegawa has devoted the past thirty-five years of his life—risking life, limb, and terrible sea sickness—to restoring this glorious seabird. Shown here, standing at the edge of Tsubame-zaki cliff, on Torishima Island, where he has just finished counting the short-tailed albatrosses (the tiny white dots clustered on the right, near the water) in the nesting slope below. (Hiroshi Hasegawa)

After working with these magnificent birds for so long, I wondered whether he had ever had a special relationship with any particular albatross. Not really, it seems, but there is the special pair that first nested at the new site he chose on Torishima in 1995. For twelve years now, they have maintained their bond, returning every year to the identical place to raise their chick. “And I will keep watching them,” Hiroshi told me. His eyes lit up and for a moment he seemed far away, back in spirit in the wild places with the birds that, but for his efforts, might be no more.