Albatross in 1798: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The bird climbs and dives through wind-speed gradients above waves, converting shear into airspeed. Heart-rate loggers show travel costs closer to rest than to flapping flight. A female banded in 1956 by Chandler Robbins at Midway. She has fledged chicks into her seventh decade — a longevity record that made a single band number famous.

Why are longlines the central threat? Baited hooks look like squid. One set can kill dozens of birds. Night setting, weighted lines and tori lines cut the kill when fleets actually use them. The 1798 Rime made killing an albatross a moral crime. The poem outran the biology and still titles newspaper bycatch stories.

The northern royal albatross colony near Dunedin is a mainland breeding site with public hides — rare for a family that usually needs remote islands. Do mice really eat albatross chicks? On Gough and some other islands, introduced house mice attack chicks of albatrosses and petrels. Eradication attempts are now as central as hook rules.