Sometimes, the most inspiring stories in nature come not from the critters themselves, but from the folk who spend their lives doing their darnedest to save them. This is one such story, one that charts more than three decades in the lives of two extraordinary New Zealanders – Kath Walker and Graeme Elliott – in a far-flung outpost of the subantarctic.
And before the shutters of conservation fatigue come down, we’re also talking about the most magnificent avian critter on the planet – the wandering albatross. The numbers say it all: a three-metre wingspan, the tens of thousands of kilometres they fly across the ocean, a lifespan of more than 50 years, if they’re lucky, and the decades of monogamous fidelity to their mate. But here’s where the statistics get bleak – the high number of adult birds taken every year by longline fishing boats in the Pacific, and the 70% population decline since 2005.
Watch these navigators soar above the swells of the Southern Ocean – if there was a measure for gobsmacking magnificence, it would rate 10 out of 10, surely.
Our two species, or subspecies (the jury’s still out on the DNA), are Gibson’s wandering albatross, which nests on Adams Island (the southernmost piece of land in the Auckland Islands
