Michelle Kappes, at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab. Do albatrosses change where they look for food from year to year? As albatrosses are gaining some fantastic attention in a December 2007 National Geographic Magazine article written by Carl Safina and photographed by Frans Lanting, we’re trying to learn more about these majestic birds through our research projects.

I’ve been studying how and where albatrosses look for food as part of my PhD at the University of California Santa Cruz. I spent four months on the very remote Tern Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands to do field research on Laysan and black-footed albatrosses. We used satellite tags to track their movements at sea, then overlaid their tracks with ocean data from other satellites to see what types of environments the albatrosses used.

We attached a satellite tag to feathers on the back of an albatross with three small pieces of adhesive tape. When it returned, we removed the tape by simply peeling it off. After it preens its feathers a little, you’d never know the albatross had been tagged. Here’s a photo I took of a Laysan albatross with a satellite tag attached to its back.

Now, by going through all the data collected by the tags, I’m continuing to learn about these remarkable birds. The question I’m focusing on is: Does albatross foraging behavior change from year to year?

The ever-changing nature of the ocean -- shifting winds, currents, sea temperatures, rainfall -- may also change the distribution of the squid, fish and fish eggs that albatrosses feed on. So when the ocean environment changes, I want to find out if the birds change where they fly, the habitats they use, or both. In other words, do albatrosses always go to the same locations regardless of ocean conditions, or do they track changes in the ocean and then change where they look for food? Or, do they change both their preferences and their locations?

So far, it looks like albatrosses do change where they look for food from year to year. They also appear to change the type of oceanographic habitat they use to find food. This is really important, because understanding how changes in the marine environment affect albatross foraging behavior can help us figure out how global climate change, for example, is likely to affect these birds.