Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival

by Carl Safina

  Rats usually shy from albatrosses’ sheer size. But on Kure Atoll, rats called the albatrosses’ bluff. They learned that the big birds were defenseless. During a visit to Kure in the mid-1960s, Cornell University ornithologist Cameron Kepler saw things that shocked him. “I frequently encountered injured Laysan Albatrosses and noticed dying and dead adults with large gaping wounds in their backs … sores five to seven inches in diameter. The thoracic cavity was often exposed, and ribs and scapulae, or even lungs, were visible through the gaping hole. The wings drooped when the bird stood or walked, as a result of severed muscles. Birds … often limped or were unable to walk. The injuries were often infested with the eggs of flies, and occasionally harbored maggots … and the birds’ bills were stained from probing into the wound. Birds in these advanced stages rarely survived the night.” Determined to find out exactly what was going on with the birds on their nests, he went out at night and confirmed the cause. “As I approached one bird, rats fled from my flashlight beam. The bird had a large wound on its back.” He shut off the flashlight, waited a few moments, then turned the light on again. “When I did so, many rats scampered off his back where they had been feeding. Sitting quietly, with the light on, I could see rats approach the live bird, crawl upon his back, and feed on the exposed flesh. Every now and then the bird would twitch, turn back to try to get the rats, and then look forward again. There were over 20 rats feeding on the bird when I left. It was dead the following morning.” Another bird was attacked in broad daylight. “Although the albatross turned and seized two rats, throwing them aside, others took their places.” That bird, too, later died. As did more than half the adult albatrosses on the island. If you were a chick on Kure, your chances of surviving the rat attack were less than one in three hundred.

  Rats have been e-rat-icated from both Kure and Midway. This atoll’s last and final rat scurried to rodent heaven in 1997. The birds responded immediately. This year, there are over 100,000 Bonin Petrels.

  How do you get rid of every rat? Jim Murphy explains: “Real simple: a lot of sweat.” Jim, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ran the operation. “You put poison bait stations out in a fifty-meter grid system, and you set traps between them—and you just stick with it. When I want to start, I go for a real high rat population. I want them at a peak. We waited for the albatrosses to leave after nesting. Then we cleaned up the bodies of all the dead albatrosses. You deny the rats their food, then put the bait out. You don’t want big rats in there fending off everyone else from certain areas, so you first do a little bit of trapping to take all of the big boys out. That busts up the whole social hierarchy. Then you go at it heavy. Usually in three to four months you can get 99.99 percent of them. You keep some bait stations going for a couple of years, just to be sure. That’s how I do it. It works.”

  The young birds here have never seen a rat, thanks to Jim. We’re walking along talking as Jim recalls his own Midway battle and other wars against alien wildlife-eating rodents on other islands. “Midway was bad. But you should’ve seen Rose Atoll, near American Samoa. The rat population was so heavy that the turtle hatchlings, as they ran to the ocean—the rats would just grab them, big-time. Very few baby turtles were making it off the island. Want to know how many rats there were? You’d take a walk in the evening, and you’d have maybe fifty rats, in a pack, in front of you. So we’d rat-kick.”

  “You mean,” I ask, “that you were actually kicking rats away?”

  “Oh yeah. They were scrounging the waterline for food, because the population was so dense. Any island with a lot of seabirds, you get flies from the bird carcasses. But there were no flies, because rats ate every carcass. In fact, they ate almost everything. By the time we got there, there were only four species of plants left. The rats had whacked the others. And anytime a seed would wash ashore, a rat would eat it. It was really extreme. You’d sit on a log to eat your meal and they’d come by and sit next to you. They weren’t afraid of us, and we didn’t want them afraid of us. We wanted to be able to get them all.

  “When we started trapping, there were so many rats that if a trap caught a rat by the snout, that’s all that was left: the nose. The rest would be stripped clean. A lot of the rats didn’t even have tails, or had bite marks all over them. There was constant fighting. It was intense. It’s what I imagine the world will be in the future, as humans become as much of an infesting force—as rats.”

  ANOTHER RATLESS DAY in paradise. This morning we are going diving—on a nice, roomy, modern, rat-free dive boat called the Spinner D. One of the divemasters, named Dan, is avid; he’s seen 140 species of fishes here. The other divemaster is an athletic young man named Kyoke.

  Nancy has just completed her scuba training. She hasn’t even gotten her permanent certification card yet. So she prudently asks Dan to bear with her if she’s a bit slow.

  Five other divers will take the plunge with us today. One’s a German with a thick accent, named Uwe. He read about Midway in 1997 in a German dive magazine. He trains German air force pilots for two German air squadrons—at a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico.

  Valerie Ewing and John are also here on their first trip to Midway, also lured by magazine articles. John says, “This is incredibly beautiful here; this is killer.” John, thirty-six, works in construction. “I’ve built a very special niche market: extremely high-end houses—a lot of people in the entertainment business, and financial entrepreneurs—twenty- or thirty-million-dollar homes.” He and Valerie each wear a Rolex watch.

  The skipper, Drew, eases the boat to a buoy marking our dive site. The permanent mooring eliminates the need to drop a coral-smashing boat anchor for every dive. Kyoke ties the boat to the buoy. We all get suited up and check our gauges, air supply, and instruments. The crystal-clear water here is about thirty-five feet deep; the bottom, patchy coral and rock reefs, and some open sand patches. A variety of reef fish come up almost immediately to check out the boat. They’re looking for food; they can’t tell the difference between us and the catch-and-release sportfishing boats that throw handouts to attract their quarry. A small Green Turtle swims around the boat just under the surface, then pops its head up for a breath. Valerie likes the turtle and she runs for her camera and takes several snapshots. She says appreciatively, “Isn’t that cool?” John exclaims, “That’s bitchin’!” Valerie, delighted, says, “Look how cute he is, honey; look how pretty his head is.” John acknowledges, “That’s pretty special.”

  Also aboard are Alain, the island’s chef, and his wife, Laure, who works as both hostess and waitress in the exclusive little Clipper House Restaurant that is the island’s only alternative to the cafeteria. Laure is very sweet and has lots of little French mannerisms: a way of opening her eyes big and looking far away to seem wistful, a sweet little pout for mock distress. They spent several years in Honolulu in the restaurant business and then got called for Midway. Laure recalls, “We said ‘What ees Meedway?’ They say to us, ‘It’s a distant Hawaiian Island.’ And you know for French people a distant Hawaiian island—it ees like dream.” She’s pouting as she struggles to get her booties and fins on. Alain is wearing sunglasses and a blue kerchief on his head.

  Several dozen chubs, called nenue in Hawaiian, gather behind the boat’s swim platform. They’re soon joined by one, two, make that four Galapagos Sharks. These are smallish, about four feet. Alain says, “I don’ like zees.” But he is fascinated and gets on the swim platform and splashes water at them with his hand.

  Dan assures Alain the sharks are “no problem.”

  I’m not afraid they’ll attack—they’re small and accustomed to divers—but a shark is capable of biting in a way an angelfish is not. And the trustworthiness of these sleek comrades is no insurance that a huge, naively famished, voracious, rapacious, predacious, greedy, insatiable, starved, gluttonous, unappeasable monster might appear. Tiger Sharks are a distinct possibility, and they are potentially dangerous. But most Tiger sightings during the last couple of we
eks have been inside the lagoon, not out here on the reef. Anyway, the odds of getting eaten are vanishingly small; gastronomically small, you might say. As far as I’m concerned, today is a good day to dive.

  Suddenly the sharks part nervously. They make way for a charcoal-gray fish, maybe eighty pounds, that strides and glides confidently into view. It’s the biggest member of the jack family, a Giant Trevally, called Ulua in Hawaiian. Among sportfishers, the “G.T.” is the most formidable opponent on these reefs, a fish of legendary strength and toughness. The sharks, who deal with Uluas professionally rather than for sport, maintain a reverential distance. Drew says, “Up at Kure Atoll, a state biologist speared an Ulua about that size, and it turned and hit him so hard in the ribs it knocked him unconscious. I’ve seen Ulua head-butt sharks in the side and shove them away. They’ll attack the mop we use to clean the boat.”

  I tell him I’ve seen husky Uluas swallow whole pork chops, bone and all, in one flashing gulp. When this Ulua passes, the sharks reconvene, more numerous than before, as if trying to patch their hurt pride by force of numbers. Alain gazes off the swim platform with trepidation. “I don’t like zees. I will not like zee sharks.”

  Skipper Drew say, “Don’t worry; they will like you.” He gives me a wink.

  Nancy fires me a skeptical look, and says quietly, “Do I need to worry?”

  I shake my head no as I pull my mask in place and bite my mouthpiece. She doesn’t need to worry. Worry is optional at no extra charge.

  We drop ourselves in among the ever-gathering sharks. But it’s the chubs that come to nibble our fins. Thank heaven for small flavors. The water is chilly up at this end of the chain. The wet suits were a good idea.

  We descend. The ocean locks around us like a sphere of glass. Nancy is doing well, but having a little difficulty adjusting her buoyancy. As pressure increases and you get squeezed, you sink faster. The trick is to keep shooting small amounts of air into your vest to remain neutrally buoyant. It takes a little practice. As we continue downward I have to clear my ears by pinching my nose and blowing several times to equalize the pressure; I always have a little trouble with this.

  The bottom is sharp, deeply pitted lava. A strong back-and-forth wave surge alternately propels us forward a few feet, then holds us in place despite our continuous kicking. Visibility is about forty feet, backed by the blue-gray beyond. The sea surface is rolling overhead like a billowing tent on a summer’s day. Our bubbles float up like silver prayers.

  The special fish we’re looking for on this dive is the long-finned endemic Hawaiian Anthias, which is quite uncommon and usually found deeper than we plan to go. They start life female and become males with harems. We’re told that some people suspect they might at times have “cheater males” who look like females but are functionally male and can get in on spawning without triggering a territorial response by the resident male—like a man dressing as a woman to sneak into the palace harem.

  We’re seeing surgeonfish with orange pectoral slashes, two-inch neon-blue damselfish with bright yellow dorsal fins, Black Surgeonfish with their emarginated fins. A school of uniformly colored unicornfishes with tail streamers flows past; and there’s a black parrotfish with brick-red fins and white on the base of the tail, and blue-green wrasses with yellow saddle markings. I need to try to remember these so I can look them up later.

  The international sign for sharks is to put your flattened hand at the crown of your head, fingers uppermost, like a fin. And while some people look more like roosters when they do it, there’s never a doubt what the signal means. Nobody points out every parrotfish, but on every dive the first shark is indicated without fail. And unless the sharks are many, every shark gets pointed out. Today, nobody is pointing out every shark. Today, hands on head simply means “Turn around; there’s a shark coming up right behind you.” The sharks, slit-pupiled, catlike, are silky, matte silver, pewter colored. I see Dan pivoting his body slowly, counting the sharks. I do the same. Thirteen. Unlucky number.

  But the sharks seem to lose interest in us before we do them. It’s a little disappointing. We thought we were more special. We explore through grottoes and under lava arches, looking for fishes in fissures, turning our attention to closer companions, like the moray eel that wears a court jester’s forced, toothy smile, and the Forceps Butterflyfish with their tweezery snoots, and barrel-chested groupers with long ventral fins. On the bottom in one area, hand-sized Sergeant Majors are guarding their purple egg masses. There are lots of red, big-eyed squirrelfishes in the lava shadows, including the Yellowfin Soldierfish, which is usually found deeper than one hundred feet but is often seen shallower up here in Midway because the water’s cooler. I notice small triggerfishes with a blue back line and yellow margins to the second dorsal and anal fins—they’re Gilded Triggerfish males. And along a rock wall swim polka-dotted Hawaiian Domino Damsels and a white-bodied, black-striped, high-backed fish that I think is a Morwong, rare elsewhere and common here. We see purple and lavender Spectacled Parrotfish with strongly etched rear scales; these are “terminal males,” the last stage in the cycle wherein everyone starts life female. And I notice a Cross-hatch Triggerfish with blue lines on a bluer head and a redrimmed tail. In the main Hawaiian Islands they, too, usually live much deeper than we are. And near the end of the dive, a big Amberjack strides boldly in and out of view. All these beautiful things we’ve named are a great delight to that inexplicable mind-body-spirit mystery we’ve named “ourselves.” Awe begets awe, and it makes for a good day.

  We come up slowly, slowly. I silently chant the safety mantra “Never come up faster than your smallest bubbles.” Now that we are suspended in midwater like hung hams, the sharks have renewed their inquisitiveness. Several pass very close under my fins.

  Near the surface, jellyfish are suddenly everywhere. They weren’t here an hour ago. In the current, thousands of small, pulsing Thimble Jellyfish drift like paratroopers. There’s also an incredible gelatinous creature unlike anything I’ve ever seen; a clear, silvery ribbon of light about two feet long and about two inches wide, with rolled ends. Kyoke writes Ctenophore on his slate. If it is, it’s a bizarre one. I’ve never seen a life-form like it. Fine, threadlike jellyfish tentacles begin sticking on our air hoses and heads and hair and across our mouths, but their stings are so mild they’re hardly noticeable; even on our lips it’s more like a tingle than a sting.

  We never saw a Hawaiian Anthias. But no matter. Nancy is astonished with her first open-water dive, and quite deservedly pleased with herself. I’m very happy she had a good dive. The sharks brought her no harm, only the fear and fascination they bring to most of us.

  Nancy is going back to Canada soon. Shaking out her hair and toweling down, she’s saying, “Well, I’ve just had one of the best weeks of my life. I think what’s so remarkable is all the different dimensions—the tuna and sharks and reef and the whole underwater world, the burrow-nesting birds living beneath your feet, the albatrosses on the surface, the Fairy Terns cozying next to their chicks in the trees—it’s a layer cake of life. It reminds me of those pictures for children where you have to pick out all the creatures and almost everywhere you focus your eyes, something materializes. It’s a Dr. Dolittle world of all these animals that don’t seem the least bit disturbed by you. It’s such a giving experience.”

  ALL VERY TRUE, but we are soon reminded that living remains difficult. On the sidewalk is a large albatross chick that appears dead—stretched out contortedly. The Grim Reaper comes along, the tines of his pitchfork shining in the pitiless sun. He hardly glances at the bird on the sidewalk as he passes by like a motor-powered apparition. I was expecting him to fork it into the pile of dead albatross chicks his cart is toting. But the Grim Reaper is a professional, with a vulture’s practiced eve for death. He knows when it’s time to get off his cart and when patience must prevail. And sure enough, as we walk by, the poor chick gives a final kick.

  On our walk home we watch one of life’s lottery winners
—a sleek adult Laysan Albatross—gliding in low over a fire hydrant on seven-foot wings. It has probably flown continually for days to get here. Its sudden arrival out of nowhere is a momentous event for the chick, whose survival now is entirely a matter of being fed in time to keep living.

  The adult lands on the grass next to a paved road. She settles her dark wings over her snowy back for the first time in days. Her feet have not touched anything solid, nor have her legs supported her weight, for perhaps two weeks. She surveys the scene through lovely, dark, pastelshadowed eyes, then calls a rusty-gate-hinge Eh eh eh. A chick immediately comes over, calling. But she knows it’s not her own chick’s voice, and waddles and weaves along. Another chick calls as she passes, also hoping to con her into misplacing her precious cargo into its crucial belly. What can a desperately hungry chick think or feel while awaiting its own parents yet seeing all these big albatrosses walking by? One by one, five more chicks come begging and calling as the albatross continues walking along. Any other chick fool or famished enough to rush forward gets a sharp rebuke from her hooked bill. Except one.

  The adult begins directly approaching the last of this line of hungering hopefuls. But she veers away from it at the last moment. (Perhaps the voice seemed familiar, but the scent was wrong?) Another youngster, much more developed, comes hopping, jumping, and flapping across the road. But the adult ignores it.

  Our adult walks about thirty yards farther, then crosses the street. Why did the albatross cross the road? Because a chick over there had just started calling. And at that call, this adult is responding, calling softly, matter-of-factly, with little excitement or energy. It simply walks directly to the chick.

  Parent and youngster meet and greet, the adult acting confident that this is the right child. People often seem incredulous that seabirds can recognize each other among thousands. But give them a little credit. We recognize voices on the telephone. We can recognize each other in cities among millions. And we do so without the sense of smell so well developed in other mammals and in albatrosses. Considering the life-or-death stakes involved in recognizing your own chick or parent or mate, animals certainly evolved proficiency for recognizing individuals a long, long time ago. We’ve merely inherited that capability from much earlier ancestors. But bubble-wrapped within our estrangement from our extended family, we fail to appreciate other animals’ competencies. We withhold recognition of their cognitive abilities. Blinded to stark evidence of our relatedness to other living beings, we heap praise on ourselves for supposedly “unique” abilities, whose origins are so plain in birds and bees.