Research
What are albatrosses?
Albatrosses are iconic long-lived seabirds capable of souring incredible distances without rest. Long viewed with superstitious awe by sailors, they spend most of their time gliding over the open ocean. Most people around the world rarely get a glimpse of these unique birds because even when they do visit dry land, it's often only to breed on remote islands before going back out to sea.
Threats to their survival
Albatrosses face multiple threats to their long-term survival, including incidental mortality (bycatch) in fisheries, predatory invasive species and disease. More than 100,000 albatrosses are killed by longline fishing every year. Regular monitoring of many albatross species is limited to a handful of sites, making it difficult to obtain an accurate estimate of their numbers in the wild.
Using satellites to monitor albatrosses in South Georgia
Our mission this year is to use satellite imagery to count breeding populations of the largest seabird species, the wandering albatross. Satellite imagery has great potential to provide low-cost accurate surveys of all sites at regular intervals. We use satellite images taken between January to March, when the birds are incubating their eggs.
South Georgia holds a globally important population of wandering albatrosses, which breeds at multiple sites around the island group. Only three of these sites are visited regularly to monitor the population. Wandering albatrosses at South Georgia have been in decline since the 1960s, and meet the IUCN criteria for Endangered status at the regional level. The information gathered – with the help of the public – will be used by scientists to identify whether albatross populations show signs of recovery due to implemented conservation actions, or if they are still in decline despite these efforts.
Satellite image of South Georgia showing breeding sites where wandering albatrosses will be counted
We Need You!
For Albatrosses From Space, we would love to have you join our team and help review some of our satellite images, to identify and count wandering albatrosses. We have tens of thousands of satellite images to sort through, and only a few researchers — your assistance will make a huge difference in the success of this project!
With your help, we hope to expand the project to include other albatross species in the future, and eventually, complete the world’s first global albatross survey.
Thank you for joining our team to help monitor albatrosses!