Wandering Albatross Facts

The wandering albatross is the most iconic member of the "tubenose" order of seabirds, a group uniquely adapted to life on the open ocean.

• Kingdom: Animalia
• Phylum: Chordata
• Class: Aves
• Order: Procellariiformes
• Family: Diomedeidae
• Genus: Diomedea
• Species: D. exulans

The order Procellariiformes includes albatrosses, petrels, and shearwaters, all characterized by the prominent, tube-like nostrils on the top of their bills. The family Diomedeidae comprises the albatrosses, and the genus Diomedea represents the "great albatrosses." The specific name exulans translates directly to "the wanderer" or "the exile," a fitting title for a bird that spends nearly its entire life far from any shore. Over millions of years, they evolved to exploit the reliable, high-speed westerly winds (the "Roaring Forties" and "Furious Fifties") that encircle the Antarctic continent.

The physical presence of a wandering albatross is breathtaking. While their body size is comparable to a large swan—measuring 3.5 to 4.4 feet in length and weighing between 13 and 26 pounds—it is their wings that set them apart. The wingspan of a large adult male can reach a staggering 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) from tip to tip.

These massive, narrow wings are specifically engineered for a flight technique called "dynamic soaring." To facilitate this, the albatross possesses a specialized tendon lock in its shoulder joint. Once the wings are fully extended, they lock into place, allowing the bird to hold them rigid against the gale-force oceanic winds without expending any muscular energy.

Their bills are large, robust, and pale pink, hooked sharply at the tip for snatching slippery prey from the water's surface. Atop the bill are the distinctive external nasal tubes. These tubes house an exceptionally highly developed olfactory system—rare among birds—allowing them to smell food from miles away. Furthermore, the tubes serve as an exhaust port for a specialized salt gland located above their eyes, which filters excess salt from the seawater they ingest, allowing them to drink safely from the ocean.

The wandering albatross is a true creature of the pelagic ocean. They are found almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere, riding the continuous wind belts across the Southern Ocean, the South Atlantic, the South Pacific, and the southern Indian Ocean.

For the vast majority of their lives, their habitat is the open sky and the surface of the freezing, turbulent ocean. They only ever return to land to breed. When they do make landfall, they select remote, predator-free subantarctic islands, such as South Georgia, the Crozet Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, and Macquarie Island. These islands provide the sparse, windswept grassy slopes necessary for the birds to perform their clumsy, running takeoffs.

Wandering albatrosses are pelagic carnivores, heavily reliant on cephalopods for their survival. Their diet consists primarily of squid and cuttlefish, supplemented by schooling pelagic fish, Antarctic krill, and various crustaceans.

They are primarily surface feeders. Rather than diving deep like penguins, they land on the water's surface and seize prey with their hooked bills. Because many deep-sea squid species undergo vertical migration—rising to the surface at night—the albatross is heavily adapted for nocturnal foraging. They use their unique sense of smell to track the scent of fish oils and rely on their keen eyesight to spot the glow of bioluminescent squid in the dark.

They are also opportunistic scavengers, frequently trailing behind fishing vessels to consume discarded offal and occasionally scavenging chunks of flesh from the floating carcasses of whales or Patagonian toothfish. To process this high-fat diet, the albatross converts its meals into a rich, foul-smelling stomach oil, which it can store for long-term energy during weeks of flying or regurgitate to feed its chick.

While they spend years in total isolation over the open ocean, wandering albatrosses possess an incredibly complex social structure when they return to their breeding colonies. They are strictly monogamous and typically mate for life, forming bonds that can endure for decades.

Finding and bonding with a mate is a lengthy process. Young albatrosses return to their natal colony and spend several years simply observing and practicing intricate courtship dances. These dances are highly synchronized rituals involving head bowing, mutual preening, aggressive bill snapping, and pointing their massive beaks to the sky while emitting strange, braying calls. Once a pair perfects their unique dance, their bond is cemented.

In the air, their behavior revolves around dynamic soaring. The bird repeatedly turns into the wind to gain altitude, then banks sharply to glide downwind at high speeds, capable of sustaining 40 to 65 mph for hours. By exploiting the wind shear—the difference in wind speed at different heights above the waves—they can travel over 120,000 kilometers in a single year, essentially circling the globe three times.

The reproductive cycle of the wandering albatross is one of the longest of any bird. Because raising a single chick requires such a massive investment of time and energy, a mated pair only breeds every two years.

In November, the pair reunites at the colony and constructs a large, bowl-shaped nest out of mud, moss, and grass. The female lays a single, massive egg in December. Both parents share the grueling incubation duties, taking shifts that last for weeks while the other flies thousands of miles to feed. The egg hatches after roughly 78 to 85 days.

The chick is fed rich stomach oil and grows rapidly, eventually outweighing its own parents as it builds up fat reserves. It takes an agonizing 9 to 10 months for the chick to fully fledge. During the brutal subantarctic winter, the chick sits alone on the nest while the parents forage. Once the juvenile finally takes flight, it will not touch land again for 5 to 10 years. In the wild, they are incredibly long-lived, commonly reaching 50 to 60 years of age.

(Population and conservation trend data sourced from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species)

Tragically, the wandering albatross is currently classified as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and their population trend is rapidly decreasing.

The primary driver of their decline is commercial fisheries bycatch, specifically pelagic longline fishing targeting tuna and toothfish. These vessels trail lines that are miles long, baited with thousands of squid. As the lines are deployed behind the boat, hungry albatrosses dive for the bait, swallow the hooks, and are dragged underwater to drown. While mitigation measures like setting lines at night or using weighted hooks exist, they are not universally enforced. Furthermore, the birds face increasing threats from marine plastic pollution, as they often mistake floating plastic debris for prey and feed it to their chicks, resulting in fatal blockages.

To learn more about the wandering albatross and seabird conservation, consult the following authoritative resources:

• IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Wandering Albatross
• Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP)
• British Antarctic Survey: Albatrosses
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology: Wandering Albatross