Priority Species Spotlight: Grey-headed Albatross

Discover fascinating facts about these majestic ocean wanderers and find out why they need our help.

in flight, Diego Ramirez Islands, Chile.
Conservation StatusEndangered(IUCN Red List)
Population StatusDeclining
Main ThreatsFisheries bycatch

Get to know Grey-headed Albatrosses 

Albatrosses are the world’s largest flying seabirds and in total there are 22 different species, including the Grey-headed Albatross. With a wingspan of over 2.1 metres (7 feet) this species is enormous – but still only medium-sized for an albatross!  

As you’d expect for a bird with a wingspan larger than a king-size bed, Grey-headed Albatrosses are supreme fliers, and one satellite-tagged bird was clocked circumnavigating Antarctica in a mere 46 days.  

These ocean wanderers even hold the Guinness World Record for the fastest bird in level flight, reaching a top speed of 127km (79 miles) an hour. This remarkable pace was achieved thanks to a bit of ‘wind assistance’ during a storm, but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless!  

What’s even more impressive is that albatrosses expend hardly any energy while flying. Their wings ‘lock’ into an extended position, meaning that they don’t have to strain to keep their wings open and can simply swoop and soar on air currents without so much as flapping. 

Grey-headed Albatrosses spend almost their entire lives at sea, navigating a huge expanse of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, from South America to South Africa and New Zealand. They only touch down on dry land when it’s time to reunite with their life-long partner and breed.  

Dancing is the love language of albatross couples

Salty solutions

Grey-headed Albatrosses can spend years at a time out on the open ocean, far from fresh water. So how do they drink? Well, they simply take a gulp of sea water and special glands extract the excess salt, creating salty "snot" that drips out of their nostrils. Clever!

Birds of myths and legend

Legend has it that albatrosses embody the souls of sailors lost at sea and the sight of one is said to bring good luck. To harm an albatross, however, will bring misfortune.

Raising the next generation 

Dancing is definitely the love language of albatross couples, and they perform long and complex routines both to find a mate and reaffirm their pair bonds. Over time, pairs will develop a dance that’s unique to their relationship and it’s one they perform to each other every time they reunite. 

The UK Overseas Territory of South Georgia, in the South Atlantic, is home to about half of the world’s breeding Grey-headed Albatrosses and pairs return to this remote island every two years to raise a single chick. 

The parents take turns incubating the egg, and once their chick has hatched, they alternate fishing trips to gather food for the youngster for more than four months, until it’s ready to take to the sky. Young Grey-headed Albatrosses usually spend their first six or seven years at sea, before returning to the colony where they hatched to find a mate and raise a family of their own.  

Grey-headed Albatross chick in nest, Bird Island, South Georgia.

Why are Grey-headed Albatrosses and other albatross species in trouble? 

Grey-headed Albatrosses mainly feed on squid, as well as fish and crustaceans, which they usually snap up from just below the water’s surface. They can cover vast distances in search of food and have an incredibly strong sense of smell, which helps them sniff out a meal up to 30km away. It’s an incredible ability, but one that has contributed to their downfall. 

For an albatross, the pungent scent of discarded fish and bait wafting from fishing boats is irresistible, and so hundreds of birds will often flock towards them. But when they try to grab an easy meal, many become caught on baited hooks and drown in longline fisheries, while others are fatally injured when they collide with the cables used to tow nets in trawl fisheries.  

This ‘bycatch’ kills tens of thousands of albatrosses a year and is the main reason that 15 of the world’s 22 albatross species are threatened with extinction.  

And for Grey-headed Albatrosses the picture is particularly worrying. Since 1977, their numbers have fallen by more than half on South Georgia (their main breeding colony globally), and for the past decade they’ve been declining by a rate of 5% a year – that’s faster than for any other albatross species.  

Now there are thought to be just 250,000 adult Grey-headed Albatrosses left in the world and they are classed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.  

Albatross taskforce.

How is the RSPB helping Grey-headed Albatrosses?  

Back in 2004, we joined forces with BirdLife International to assemble the Albatross Task Force (ATF): the world’s first international team of bycatch mitigation experts who work directly with fishing crews and governments to keep albatrosses safe.  

Together with our global partners, we test and develop simple solutions, such as: 

  • Lines of brightly coloured streamers, called bird-scaring lines, that flutter in the wind and frighten albatrosses away from the danger zone around cables and baited hooks. 

  • Adding weights to longlines to make them sink faster, so that there’s less opportunity for the birds to grab at the baited hooks and become caught.  

  • Clever technology, like Hookpods, that shield the baited hooks as they enter the water, before popping open once the hooks sink below the reach of hungry beaks.

An ATF instructor showing fishers how to fit bird scaring lines.

And the great news is that these measures are incredibly effective! In the South African trawl fleet, there has been a 99% reduction in albatross bycatch, while in the Namibian longline fishery seabird deaths are down by 98%. Boat captains in New Zealand report zero seabird bycatch since using Hookpods. Armed with compelling evidence like this, the ATF team, and a growing group of global partners, are also able to support government decision-making on legislation. For example, in Argentina, bird-scaring lines have reduced albatross deaths by up to 88% and this evidence helped to convince the government to introduce regulations requiring trawl fishing vessels to use them.  

What makes these seabird-saving measures even better is that they are great for fishers too, helping to save time and money. In Chile, the ATF tested a new type of fishing net that not only reduced bycatch by 98%, it also saved $3,000 per vessel through savings on material and operational costs. Win-win!  

The ATF is also carrying out research on Grey-headed Albatrosses in an important Marine Protected Area around the Diego Ramírez Islands in southern Chilean waters – the second largest colony for Grey-headed Albatrosses after South Georgia – to help strengthen protections here and in the surrounding waters.  

Thanks to the hard work of ATF staff, fishers and partners, some threatened albatross species – such as the Black-browed Albatross – are now recovering. It’s an encouraging result and inspiring proof of the power of conservation, but there’s still a long way to go for most albatross populations. Whether other species, like the Grey-headed Albatross, can make a similar recovery is yet to be seen and will depend on a truly global conservation effort. 

A lone Gannet spreading their wings looking straight towards the camera.
Gannet
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Taking species on a journey to recovery 

Helping species to reach a healthy conservation status is a journey. Each journey is tailored to the species in question, but shares four stages:

1. DiagnosisIdentifying there's a problem, and researching to find out what's causing it
2. Testing solutionsDeveloping practical solutions and trialling them to make sure they work 

3. RecoveryProviding these solutions across the whole range of the species
4. Long-term legacyReaching improved conservation status and securing a long-term legacy for the species’ recovery 

Recovery stage

Our work to help albatross species is at the Recovery stage of the species recovery curve, because we know what needs to be done to help these species and work is happening to deliver these solutions. However, this doesn’t necessarily reflect an increase in numbers of birds yet.  We need to keep pressing to ensure that as many fisheries as possible adopt these solutions and maximise the number of albatrosses that will benefit from them.

Thank you! 

Our vital work for albatrosses is made possible thanks to the generous and ongoing support of RSPB members and supporters, plus grant funds from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Paul M Angell Family Foundation, South Georgia Heritage Trust and the Planeterra  Foundation – thank you for helping to turn their fortunes around.