Return of the Great White Bird

BY AWAKE! CORRESPONDENT IN JAPAN

WITH stick in hand, the men set out to beat the beautiful white birds to death, one by one. The birds were albatross. The men: Hanemon Tamaoki and his accomplices. The place: Torishima, an island some 400 miles [600 km] south of Tokyo. The year was 1887.

Tamaoki had planned this for years. Soft feathers for mattresses were in great demand both at home and abroad, and Torishima was a remote island whose only inhabitants were the thousands of albatross that arrived there regularly to breed. Among them was the short-tailed albatross, especially attractive to Tamaoki. It was the biggest seabird of the Northern Hemisphere. Just imagine how many feathers covered a plump body that weighed about 17 pounds [8 kg] and had a wing span of over eight feet [2.5 m]! Moreover, this bird was docile and made no attempt to flee even when endangered.

Tamaoki brought as many as 300 workers to the island to help kill and pluck the birds. They built a village and a small railway to transport the dead birds. The operation was so efficient that Tamaoki soon became very wealthy—at the expense of some five million birds. The devastation was so great that when the island’s volcano erupted in 1902, destroying the village and all its inhabitants, some viewed it as a “curse for killing the albatross.” Even so, the next year, men came again, in search of the birds that were left.

Almost a thousand miles [1500 km] away in the East China Sea on a group of desolate, rocky islands between Taiwan and Okinawa, a man named Tatsushiro Koga had been carrying on the same lucrative business. Like Tamaoki, Koga found that his supply of birds evaporated rapidly. Finally, he left the island in 1900—but not before he had eliminated some one million albatross.

A Tragic Result of Greed

That wholesale destruction of the birds was a tragedy with dire consequences. Of the various species of albatross, three live in the North Pacific, with principal nesting grounds on the islands plundered by Tamaoki and Koga. One of them, the short-tailed albatross (Diomedea albatrus), evidently had no other known breeding ground in the world.

The albatross was once held in awe by sailors on the open seas. Legends and lore of the sea portray it as the harbinger of winds, mist, and fog. It is no legend, though, that this great white bird’s unusually long wings enabled it to soar across an ocean in a matter of days, most of the time riding the wind with wings held nearly motionless. Its ability to glide and to remain at sea for long periods of time is unmatched.

Though the albatross can soar gracefully in the air, its movement on the ground is slow and awkward. Its long wings and rather plump body prevent it from taking off quickly. This, along with not having learned to fear men, made the bird easy prey. Because of that, people gave it names like gooney bird or mollymawk.a

Irresponsible people who were fueled by the knowledge that dead albatross generate money continued the extermination gleefully. A survey revealed that by 1933, there were fewer than 600 birds on Torishima. In desperation, the Japanese government declared the island off-limits to humans. But unscrupulous men rushed to the island to kill as many birds as they could before the prohibition went into effect. By 1935, according to one expert, only 50 birds were left. Finally, the short-tailed albatross had to be declared extinct. What a tragic result of human greed! But a big surprise was in store.

The Return Begins

One evening in January 1951, a man climbing on Torishima’s rocks was startled by a sudden clacking. He found himself eye to eye with albatross! The short-tailed albatross had somehow survived and was breeding on Torishima again. This time, though, the birds were nesting on sloping ground almost impossible for humans to reach. And they seemed to have a new wariness of man. How nature lovers must have rejoiced!

The Japanese government moved swiftly. They planted pampas grass to make the ground firmer for nests and prohibited humans from going to Torishima. The albatross was declared a national treasure and became an internationally protected bird.

Since 1976, Hiroshi Hasegawa, of Japan’s Toho University, has been studying the birds and now visits the island three times a year to survey them. He told Awake! that by ringing the birds’ legs with a different color each year, he has discovered that only once in three or four years do short-tailed albatross return to their place of birth to breed. They breed first at six years of age and lay just one egg each time. Therefore, even with an average life span of 20 years, it takes a long time to increase their numbers. Of the 176 eggs laid on Torishima during the winter of 1996/97, only 90 hatched.

What do albatross do the rest of the time? Hasegawa says that little is known about this. They definitely avoid land and people. Do albatross follow and land on ships? That is mere legend with no evidence to support it, according to Hasegawa. He is quite sure, he says, that “Japanese albatross don’t land on ships.” But he adds that elsewhere in the world, “some birds may hang around for a short time if they are fed.” Most of the time, they do what they do best—mount favorable air currents and roam the vast ocean. When they are tired, they sleep afloat on the sea. They eat squid, flying fish, crab, and shrimp. The birds that Hasegawa has ringed are regularly spotted in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. And in 1985 the sighting of a short-tailed albatross off the California coast—the first time in nearly a century—caused quite a stir among bird-watchers there.

What of the Future?

On the positive side, short-tailed albatross are steadily increasing in number. Last May, Hasegawa estimated that there were “over 900 including the chicks.” He added: “By the year 2000, we should have over 1,000 birds on Torishima alone, with over 100 chicks being born each year.” Thrilling, too, is the fact that in 1988, after 88 years, they were seen breeding again in the East China Sea. The birds have chosen a rocky outpost in disputed territory, which should ensure safety from human interference for a while.

The wrongs of a hundred years ago are gradually being righted. Or are they? Researchers often find that when they catch the birds for banding, they panic and vomit. Out of their stomachs come bits of plastic, disposable cigarette lighters, and other refuse that people are carelessly dumping into their feeding ground, the ocean.

Will human folly drive the great white bird to the brink once again?

[Footnote]

[Picture on page 16]

Torishima, home of the short-tailed albatross

[Picture on page 16, 17]

The long, slender wings of the albatross enable it to be the world’s master glider

[Picture on page 17]

Short-tailed albatross have made a comeback on Torishima