Pete Leary/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Wisdom (left) attempts to nudge her mate off the nest for her turn atIt’s pretty amazing that Wisdom, named by scientists who stuck a tag on her ankle years ago, has lived this long. The average Laysan albatross dies at less than half her age. Scientists thought that, like other birds, albatross females became infertile late in life and carried on without producing chicks.
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But Wisdom, who hatched the chick at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean, defies comparison. Her feat could prompt scientists to chuck some of their early theories about the bird out the door.
Wisdom has raised chicks five times since 2006, and as many as 35 in her lifetime. Just as astonishing, she has likely flown up to 3 million miles since she was first tagged at Midway Atoll at the end of the Hawaiian Island chain in 1956, according to scientists who have tracked her at the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s “4 to 6 trips from the Earth to the Moon and back again with plenty of miles to spare,” the USGS said in anenthusiastic announcement Tuesday.
“It blows us away that this is a 62-year-old bird and she keeps laying eggs and raising chicks,” said Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the Bird Banding Laboratory at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel.
“We know that birds will eventually stop reproducing, when they’re too old to breed anymore,” he said. “The assumption about albatross is it will happen to them, too. But we don’t know where that line is. That in and of itself is pretty amazing.”
Wisdom’s advanced-age reproduction not only could help scientists understand more about the albatross but also learn more about the health of the oceans.
“These birds are emblematic of the health of the ocean and the health of that ecosystem,” Peterjohn said. “It has to be healthy for them to live long.”
But the USGS and other organizations that study albatrosses must first untangle some shortcomings in the research. Scientists say past methods of data collection have been a little shaky.
Thousands of Laysan and other species of albatross have been banded since 1956, when scientists started studying them at the atoll to determine why so many were striking Navy aircraft, killing the birds and damaging the machines.
The tracking bands, also called tags, weren’t all that reliable. They generally fall off after 20 years, sometimes before being replaced. Wisdom went through six, which were replaced before she lost them.
As far as Peterjohn and other scientists know, “half the birds could be 60 years old,” he said. “These birds could be much older than we think.”
Nineteen of 21 albatross species are threatened with extinction, and their demise might be linked directly to humans. Long-line fishing has depleted their numbers. Fishermen throw bait in the ocean to lure fish, but they also lure albatrosses that get hooked and drown when they squat on the water to eat.