by Carl Safina
Still, a few survived as the bird-protection law went into effect. The people did not like the law. Later that spring, the last adult Short-tailed Albatrosses on Earth saw people approaching, and soon the slopes were still.
The main crater erupted again—violently—in 1939. Though all but two inhabitants escaped this time, one river of lava completely filled the harbor cove, replacing it with “a forbidding, jagged rampart of black volcanic rock.” Torishima was now all but inaccessible and uninhabitable by humans.
The last thin hope was that a few chicks that hatched during the years just before that final massacre might have fledged and survived by remaining in the distant, oblivious safety of the wide sea. The youngest chicks should have returned in the 1940s. If they did, instead of finding hundreds of thousands of courting, calling birds, they would have been met by only the silent sweep of the wind on the quiet slopes, and the rhythmic roll of the surf below.
During World War II a Japanese naval garrison occupied Torishima until 1945. During that time, among the three hundred men, one lone albatross was seen. Was this the last one?
Japan established a remote weather station on Torishima in 1946. They reported no albatrosses. But they did note that Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels came to the island at night in enormous numbers, were attracted to bright lights, and that delicious meals of roast bird could be had simply by building a bonfire after dark and letting the petrels fly into it.
In 1949 Oliver Austin Jr., an American ornithologist stationed in Japan, searched in vain for any sign of the Short-tailed Albatross. Failing to find a single individual, he presumed it extinct. He wrote, “The chances that any of these fine birds remain alive today are remote indeed … . Hope always remains that in some overlooked corner of the globe the species will once more be found … . It seems only too likely that Steller’s Albatross has become one of the more recent victims of man’s thoughtlessness and greed.”
On January 6, 1951, weather station director Shoji Yamamoto had a day off and decided it was a good morning for a long, exploratory walk. Scanning the view of Torishima’s ash slopes, he was astonished by the sight of ten large ghostly-white birds. He rushed back to the station to confirm their identity. They were Short-tailed Albatrosses, returned from the dead.
Thirteen Short-tails were photographed in 1954. At the time they reappeared, perhaps forty remained alive, including younger birds at sea. Forty. If there were five million originally, about one out of 125,000 had survived. Of the lowest reasonable estimate of just one million original Short-tailed Albatrosses, forty is less than one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent, a number statistically equivalent to zero. But biologically, the difference between zero and forty is the difference between oblivion and hope, past and future.
When the first known eggs of the Short-tail’s literal rebirth—seven of them—were laid in 1954, they were apparently the first Short-tailed Albatross eggs laid in over twenty years. In 1958 Japan designated the Short-tailed Albatross a “natural monument.” The staff of the weather station acted as the albatrosses’ benevolent stewards until 1965, when frequent earthquakes and the threat of further eruptions forced the station’s abandonment.
Dr. Hiroshi Hasegawa first visited Torishima in 1976. Instead of the sad scene he expected, he was so inspired by the vigor and vitality of the few dozen birds he found that in that moment, he saw his life’s work. One may imagine that, like an albatross coming to its breeding ground after wandering many years at sea, he felt he had come at last to the absolute right place.
Hiroshi Hasegawa was raised in the Buddhist tradition. He recognizes Torishima as a place sacred as any shrine; what place could possibly be more sacred than one relied upon by an entire race of living beings? Because Hiroshi senses the island’s sanctity, he perceives in it an opportunity. “It is my responsibility to save the species,” Hiroshi has said. The fact is, it is the responsibility of all of us, but Hiroshi, far more than any person in Japan or anywhere, has recognized this calling and acted.
So nearly nonexistent had the Short-tail become that between 1940 and 1991 the average number of sightings throughout the entire ocean from Japan to California was one per year. Between 1975 and 1992, aerial and ship surveys of fifteen thousand square kilometers of ocean off Alaska—where Native hunters in kayaks had routinely speared the birds—found only one Short-tailed Albatross.
Hiroshi has aided and abetted the birds to great effect, engineering what Rick Steiner has called “one of the most extraordinary resurrections in avian history.” Because the newly steepened slopes of the volcano were loose with granular ash that caused eggs to roll, Hiroshi replanted clumps of native grass and built dozens of terraces to offer level nest sites for the birds. He built dikes and channels to divert away from the nesting areas the heavy rain runoff and landslides that can wash away eggs and kill chicks. And he set up decoys and recordings of courtship calls in a part of the island where the ground and vegetation offered more secure nesting potential but the birds had not vet recolonized. Before Hasegawa began his life’s work in the mid-1970s, only about seventy-five adults nested. By the turn of this century four hundred adults (two hundred pairs) were raising about seventy-five chicks each year. Including juveniles, the population, growing at 7 percent annually, had passed fifteen hundred birds. We salute you, Hiroshi.
In 1987, exactly one hundred years after the first feather hunters climbed ashore among the swarms of giant birds, Hiroshi climbed across the shoulders of the island’s volcanic slopes to conduct a short ritual that Rick Steiner characterized as “part apology, part prayer.” Collecting some of the numerous albatross bones from the surrounding ground, he placed them gently on a large stone beside two memorial cairns, lit candles and incense, and knelt. As an offering to the spirits of the millions of dead albatrosses, on the stone he poured seawater for their drink, and set out dried squid and flyingfish.
In the Buddhist worldview, each action carries consequence, not just for the acted upon but for the actor as well. If we do not offer reverence and respect to the world, we will receive accordingly. As Hiroshi told Steiner, “It is our job to make a new world.” And it is.
For the Short-tail, bets for the future are almost entirely with Torishima (around 1970 a few also returned to the Senkaku Islands near Taiwan, where a small handful now nest). The prevailing odds remain risky. Even with its miraculous resurrection from apparent extinction, the Short-tailed Albatross is hardly in the clear. Torishima is still an active, smoldering, venting volcano, and it may yet again blow. Or, after witnessing a half century of insults, it may look kindly upon Hiroshi and the albatrosses cloaking its own shouldering slopes, and keep its peace awhile.
Hasegawa has written that he is “optimistic that this impressive bird will once again be seen with regularity along the coastlines of its vast marine range,” including “the long and beautiful festoon of islands lying along the western edge of the Pacific Ocean.” But full recovery will take two centuries. Hiroshi Hasegawa will not be with us all that time. And so here is my wish: that in the great karmic cycle, Hiroshi will return, reincarnated, to see the albatrosses multiply. And as their tribe increases, may the kindred spirits of Hiroshi Hasegawa likewise proliferate; may more like him come forward, for the sake of us all, so that together we may, indeed, make the world new.
SINCE 1981 the occasional Short-tailed Albatross has visited the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. A female has laid an egg at Midway Atoll, and two birds have been courting there, leading to excited hopes for a new colony.
Nonetheless, the Short-tailed Albatross remains endangered, and the Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that if fishery observers report more than two Short-tails killed by Alaska longline fishing boats this year, they will likely close the year’s fishing for the whole fleet. Of all the wildlife problems caused by fisheries, it’s ironic that this albatross’s problems, originating with feather hunting as they did, hang so pointedly over this fleet. In the Southern Ocean’s subantarctic, where albatross
populations are being driven downward because of longline fishing, much of the fishing is not under effective control.
THE IRONY IS NOT LOST on Mark Lundsten, but here in Seward Harbor on the deck of the Masonic he’s telling me that he “stopped fighting and learned to love the Short-tailed Albatross.”
And so the Short-tail has collected one more savior and proselytizer. Lundsten’s been in the forefront of efforts by Alaska long-liners to develop not only methods but regulations for minimizing seabird mortality. I’m thankful he has, because a) it makes things a lot better for Short-tailed, Black-footed, and Laysan Albatrosses; b) it makes his fleet the only group of fishing boats in the world actually initiating regulatory efforts to reduce bird “by-kill”; and c) he averted war with the conservation groups. The fleet Lundsten is part of was getting hammered in the press over bird kills. It looked like regulations would be imposed from outside. So Mark helped find solutions that would work for both the birds and the fishing boats. Now Mark wants to show people that long-line fishing doesn’t have to be dangerous to birds. So he’s issued a challenge: anyone willing to observe firsthand the effectiveness of his efforts to help solve the problem can get on his boat and see what the real world is like. And here I am.
LONGLINE FISHING BOATS PRACTICE either drift long-lining or bottom long-lining. Both involve lines miles long, armed with thousands of baited hooks. Drift longlines are usually thirty to eighty miles long (the line is stored on an enormous spool on deck). They drift in the current. Their main targets are Swordfish and tunas. They’ve deeply depleted Atlantic Swordfish and marlins, as well as many shark species worldwide. And they have serious by-kill problems, catching, killing, and largely wasting undersized fish and endangered sea turtles—and birds.
Bottom longlines, which Mark uses, are usually much shorter, and are anchored to the seabed. Their by-kill problems are fewer, and—unlike the bottom dragnets called trawls that scour and degrade bottom habitat—they are relatively friendly to the seafloor as long as there’s no branching coral in the area. The main by-kill problem created by bottom longlines is mortality to seabirds trying to snatch the bait before the line sinks.
Two U.S. longline fleets operate in the North Pacific: Hawaiian boats hunt tunas and Swordfish; Alaskan boats like Mark’s target bottom fish like Sablefish, Pacific Halibut, and Pacific Cod. The Alaskan boats set an incomprehensible 170 million hooks annually. The Hawaii Swordfish and tuna longline fishery set 15 million hooks annually throughout the 1990s—less than a tenth as many as the Alaskan fleet—but their perhook albatross kill rate was about twenty-five times that of the Alaska fishery.
That difference occurs because the drift longlines are less heavily weighted and don’t sink out of range as rapidly. Until recently Hawaiian long-liners weren’t required to use any measures to avoid killing seabirds; they killed about 1,800 Black-footeds and 1,400 Laysans annually. At the turn of the new millennium, conservation groups sued to help protect albatrosses and endangered sea turtles, and federal-court action resulted in fishing-gear restrictions and large areas closed to longlines (in addition to the earlier closure to protect Monk Seals). Some longline boat owners then decided to leave Hawaii and press into California harbors, taking their trouble elsewhere.
Alaskan long-liners each year snag approximately 600 Black-footed Albatrosses and 700 Laysans—some estimates are higher—plus one Short-tailed Albatross (that’s what’s known; management agencies still don’t bother collecting bird data from a part of the halibut fishery that sets about 30 million hooks annually, about 18 percent of the fishery). Alaska boats also drown about 13,000 gulls and fulmars (Hawaiian boats don’t, because these birds don’t live in the warmer waters toward Hawaii).
U.S. boats work among some of the densest concentrations of albatrosses. But American boats aren’t the only ones on the whole ocean. Japanese, Taiwanese, Canadian, Russian, Chinese, and Korean long-liners are out there too. The United States operates about 125 drift long-liners in international waters. China sends a roughly equal number, Korea has about 150, and Japan and Taiwan each operate about 1,600 long-liners. No one knows how many birds they kill each year. The best guess—and it’s a crude one—is over 30,000. If those numbers are in the right ballpark, and especially if many of those are albatrosses, the kill rate starts to be very significant. Recent calculations indicate that Black-footed Albatrosses cannot withstand losing more than about 10,000 birds per year; more than that will drive a decline. The limited information scientists have suggests that tuna and Swordfish longlines alone are killing more than this—even without considering mortality from bottom-long-line fisheries for halibut and cod, or natural mortality. From an ocean animal’s perspective, longlines are a bit like minefields in the feeding grounds of the sea.
AT ONE TIME, albatrosses survived extermination only by being at sea. Today, most albatrosses are safe only on land—where they spend just 5 percent of their lives. Hunting and killing on land in decades past was certain to miss at least some islands and some nests and some birds. But nowadays every albatross, no matter how remote its nest, finds numerous opportunities to die on a longline. If it does and it has a chick in the nest when that happens, the chick starves.
Increasing numbers of long-liners crisscross the ocean the way worry lines turn a face old. Most current longline fisheries first developed after World War II; some, as recently as the 1990s. Today boats mine the Southern Ocean with about 160 million hooks. In the North Pacific, Japan’s boats alone annually set 130 million hooks. You’ve already got some idea that the seafloor off Alaska and Canada’s west coast bristles with 200 million hooks each year. Grand worldwide sum: around 1.1 billion hooks annually.
All the world’s albatrosses of all species and ages total perhaps ten million individuals. Do the math. Only the Galapagos Albatross—which does not seem attracted to boats—shows no evidence or inclination toward trouble with longlines. All the rest are bedeviled by them. Long-lining could catch the last albatross—unless we do a few easy things.
THE THINGS THAT MAKE albatrosses so successful in the natural world are the same that make them so vulnerable in the human-dominated world. Their exceptionally long lives, extremely low natural adult mortality, and long-delayed maturation before they begin breeding carry surprising consequences: a mere 3 percent increase in adult mortality can lead to a 50 percent population decline in just twenty years. You might think albatrosses could perhaps compensate for increased adult mortality by laying more eggs or raising more chicks. But they can’t. They don’t have the time, and there’s not enough food.
Longlines are annually killing perhaps 100,000 albatrosses and many petrels. Work by New Zealand ornithologist Dr. Sandy Bartle and colleagues shows population declines over the last several decades of 50 to 80 percent in some albatross colonies.
Two fisheries causing the most trouble for albatrosses are problematic in other ways. One has severely depleted the Southern Bluefin Tuna it is targeting. Japanese tastes and willingness to pay outlandish sums for giant bluefin tuna make that fish the world’s most commercially valued—and biologically undervalued. In the mid-1990s a single 715-pound Southern Bluefin Tuna sold at auction for $83,500, nearly $117 per pound. But we’re into a later, greater millennium, and so on January 5, 2001, a 444-pound Northern Bluefin caught off Japan sold at auction for $173,000. One fish. That’s $390 per pound. Wholesale. Jackpots like that create relentless pressure. Each year fishers set over 100 million tuna-intended hooks where the range of Southern Bluefins heavily overlaps that of albatrosses. Worth too much money in Japan to be allowed to live anywhere, bluefins are depleted everywhere they swim: in the Pacific, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian, and Southern Oceans. A study by Australian scientist Dr. Rosemary Gales in the mid-1990s showed that the Southern Bluefin fishery alone was already causing population declines in roughly half of the world’s albatross species.
Enter the trendy “Chilean seabass” fishery, which started in the mid-1990s. Interestingly, there is no su
ch thing as a “Chilean seabass.” The fishery targets two species of big (hundred-pound) fish—the Patagonian Toothfish and the Antarctic Toothfish—that live in cold, deep subantarctic waters. They’re caught not just near Chile, but all around the bottom of the world—exactly where most albatrosses breed. Many such boats operate illegally—unlicensed, poaching in closed waters, or far exceeding their quota. Poachers in Antarctic waters take twice the legal catch. They inflict some of the worst seabird mortality anywhere. Attributing the recent sudden 17 percent decline in the Falkland Islands’ enormous Black-browed Albatross population to Patagonian Shelf longline fisheries, Falklands census team leader Dr. Nic Huin said, “Illegal and unregulated fisheries around the world are having a disastrous effect on these birds.” And they get a renewed financial boost every time we buy what they’ve caught.
Illegal fishing boats, often registered in cash-starved countries unconcerned with regulations, are not luxury vessels. Most illegal boats haven’t heard of workers’ rights. Many such boats are a world apart, crewed by tough, economically strapped people far from home and community. A toothfishing boat might have a Korean fishing master and a Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and Indonesian crew. Crew members are sometimes compelled to spend two years at sea before they can go home, and during that time may be prohibited from going ashore in ports. Often they have only cold-water showers, and must wash their clothes by towing them behind the boat. Fishing masters often use force and humiliation, and will not hesitate to discipline a man they deem to be not working hard enough by slapping him in the face.
When an Australian patrol boat discovered a Spanish-owned, Togo-registered boat with forty-four men fishing in Australian waters, they chased the pirates for ten days, over twenty-two hundred nautical miles. Finally, with the aid of three South African naval ships, they captured the boat off Cape Town with one hundred tons of illegal toothfish, worth over half a million dollars. Another Spanish-owned boat flying the Belize flag, which had earlier been caught fishing illegally in Australian waters, was later discovered off Kerguelen Island by a Greenpeace ship, which pursued it for sixteen days across three thousand miles of ocean. When it put in to Mauritius, the government found 170 tons of illegal toothfish and refused to let it unload. The owners renamed the ship and sent it back to work.
