Drake Passage - 4 March 2007
by Kate Laird

Good morning! Seal's position: 56 26 S, 67 18 W, 26 miles to go to Cape Horn.

Cape Horn in sight. We're sailing again after a night of motoring in very light winds. Jib is poled out and Cape Horn is appearing under the pole.

Gray-headed Albatross.

There's a Wandering Albatross and a Gray-headed Albatross flying near the boat - and a Pintado Petrel humming past right next to the boat - but far less bird life than we remember from previous years. The Wandering Albatross nesting population has halved in the last thirty years in South Georgia, their primary breeding site. They are under continual threat from longline fishing. An albatross is killed every five minutes by a longline fishing boat. That's 100,000 per year, a far bigger hit than the species can possibly survive.

The sad thing is, it is relatively easy to stop killing the albatross by sinking the fishing lines as they leave the boat. In last year's legal fishery around South Georgia, with observers on every boat, not a single albatross was taken by the South Georgia licensed boats. The problem is the poachers, who are hard to find in the vast Southern Ocean. Also, several South American countries have not adopted the policies to protect the albatross in their licensed fisheries, even though sinking the lines is quite a cheap and simple solution, and doesn't affect the fish catch in any way.

When a Wandering Albatross is killed by a fishing line, there can be a threefold effect. Females are killed in far higher numbers than males, as their fishing range tends to take them into more heavily fished areas than the males. If there is a chick on the nest, the chick will die, because a single parent can't possibly feed the enormous chicks (they reach the size of an adult before fledging and fishing on their own). Wandering Albatross used to mate for life; that may be changing, but with more females dying than males, it will be enormously difficult for the species to survive.

Wandering Albatross feeding its chick.

Last season, Ellen MacArthur tried to raise the profile of the threat to the Wandering Albatross. She spent two weeks working with Sally Poncet, who has been studying the albatrosses in South Georgia since the 70s, but even Ellen MacArthur's name hasn't managed to attract enough attention to the plight of the albatrosses. I watched one interview she gave where the interviewer said, basically, "Who cares? They're not as cute as dolphins." To people looking at photos of them on land, they may look like big seagulls - but no one who has seen one soar past a boat in the Southern Ocean would ever agree.

Their wing span can be greater than 3 meters - Seal's breadth is only 4.9 meters. They soar effortlessly past us as we struggle through the Southern Ocean. They use the winds to their advantage, only landing on the water when the winds are too weak to support flight. Their range is extraordinary: One albatross was tracked by GPS and covered 25,000 miles in nine weeks. Average speed is 55 km/hr, and much of the time they travel at more than 85 km/hr. We always feel privileged when they slow down to circle the boat. (Seal is traveling at 12.2 km/hr right now. Our top speed is about 20 km/hr on our Dacron wings.)

We haven't seen any old Wandering Albatrosses on this trip. They are easily distinguishable from the immatures and younger adults, which have far more brown/black on their upper wings. My understanding is that black wings are more "costly" to produce but are much tougher. They're valuable for an immature albatross still learning to negotiate 50-knot winds. The old albatross, however, have entirely white wings - their flying skill is so great, that there is no longer any need for black feathers.

Wandering Albatross.

Wandering Albatrosses were almost driven to extinction early in the century by sealers clubbing them for food, but they had largely recovered until the toothfish fisheries moved into the Southern Ocean.

Between Hamish and I, we've sailed several hundred thousand miles in the Southern Ocean. Hamish has made fifteen trips to Antarctica, several to South Georgia, and he's done deliveries between Cape Horn and New Zealand and South Africa. I've put in four trips to Antarctica, one to South Georgia, and covered the other side from Sydney to Cape Town. That pales in comparison to our crew Simon, who's sailed through the Southern Ocean twice the wrong way. Kiki and Stu have circumnavigated once, and Kate O'Connell has sailed from Sydney to Cape Town. We're all quite proud of the miles we've done in the Southern Ocean. They weren't easy miles.

It is no wonder, then, that we feel so strongly about these birds that soar past us with such ease, these creatures that can accomplish all our miles put together in a single season in the Furious Fifties. If given the chance, they live for more than sixty years in this Southern Ocean we dare dabble in.

To see more of Hamish's albatross photos, go to
http://www.expeditionsail.com/libraries/slideshows/slideshowsframe.htm
and click on "South Georgia Albatross Slide Show".