Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival

by Carl Safina

  One coughed-up bolus contains both natural and unnatural items: a couple dozen squid beaks and several smooth pumice stones light enough to float, plus a couple of plastic bottle caps and a bit of gill net festooned with fish eggs. I hadn’t before noticed albatrosses swallowing monofilament gill netting. It seems they’re still finding some drift-net pieces that have been floating around—perhaps tangling sea creatures—since before the ban went into effect six years ago. Drift nets up to two and a half miles long (considered “short” compared with the banned nets, sixteen times that length) are still legal. But the net fragments on the ground here are so deteriorated you can easily break them apart with your fingers. They must have been drifting a long time indeed. Imagine the birds trying to clip off bite-sized pieces of netting—how easily it could get looped around their bills or tangled around their heads. Mere eating has turned high-risk for the albatrosses.

  On the ground is a lot of pumice that albatrosses have eaten and puked up. We know that in this part of the ocean flyingfish eggs sometimes adhere to floating objects. This might be the best clue to why albatrosses eat hard plastic—they probably eat naturally occurring drifting objects for the attached egg masses and other digestible creatures growing on them. They’ve been eating pumice for millennia, and it’s likely that they’ve simply transferred the habit to anything swallowable that floats, like cigarette lighters. The pumice the birds disgorge is rounded and worn smooth. But the plastic can break into sharp shards that can block the esophagus or stomach, or cause internal tears or punctures.

  I come suddenly upon a strange opaque black bottle in the sand. Its rounded bottom attenuates into an elegant neck with an unusual cap. A genie bottle, certainly. For the world’s oceans, the evil debris genie has already been uncorked; mere anarchy loosed upon the world, and it seems there’s no putting it back.

  RAY BOLLAND IS EXAMINING FISHING NETS cast up onto the beach. One thing we already know: a lot of the fishing nets come from far away and drift great distances before hanging up here. Some fishing gear washes overboard in violent storms. Some is purposely jettisoned because it is easier and cheaper to dump unwanted nets and lines at sea. Those discarded nets sometimes continue to entangle fish, whales, turtles, and seabirds. But Ray is trying to categorize the netting. He wants to know what countries are using it in what locations and in which fisheries. Then, maybe, it can be reduced at the sources. Ray is working toward putting the genie back.

  We stop at one pile and Ray takes out a ruler. He kneels and starts to catalog, dictating as I write in his notebook. “Knotted, monofilament, eighty-one and one.” We walk over to the next pile. “Knotless, polyethylene, eighty-seven by three.” The first number is the mesh size and the second is the twine diameter, in millimeters. “Red knotted, twelve by one. White knotless, poly-e, two ninety-five by three. Green knotted poly-e, two-fifty by three; this is three-strand with a Z-twist.”

  Ray tells me that his earlier career, working with fish and marine mammals, was interesting. “But to tell you the truth,” he says, “the trash is also very interesting—trying to figure out where it’s from and what fisheries it was used in, and how long it takes to get here.”

  The nets mostly float, and come in shallow before they get grounded. In their recent three-week cleanup cruise, each working day they collected about a ton of derelict nets, line, rope, and other fishing debris. Removing stuck netting is backbreaking, hazardous work. Some balled-up loads of netting weighed a thousand pounds, and took hours to dislodge from the corals. From just 5 percent of the island chain’s reefs, they removed twenty-five tons of wildlife-hazardous fishing gear.

  “We estimated that to clean up everything in these islands would take about ten years of work,” Ray says. “At French Frigate Shoals we found that some of the worst places are right next to where the Monk Seals pup. While we were working we had these little juvenile seals following us around and checking us out. Then we went up to Pearl and Hermes Reef. That place was pretty trashed up. We found the remains of seals, sharks; we found bird bones, dolphin bones—”

  Netting hung up on reefs can roll up on the bottom or get caught in the surge, ripping out large pieces of coral; or it can snag and hang like a curtain, waiting in ambush for fish, turtles, seals, and other wildlife. Ray has found seal pups—alive and dead—in some of the nets. Last year, before the seal scientists had returned to start their season here on Laysan, several interns watched helplessly as a seal became tangled in netting. The situation was deemed too dangerous for inexperienced people to go out and try to cut the big panicked animal free. Even people who heard about it secondhand speak as though it was a personally traumatic event. Ray says, “With all my work with animals, I’ve tried to keep a level head. But one of the saddest things was when we found a four-year-old seal that had drowned in a net, and to realize that somebody’s thoughtlessness thousands of miles away did that.” Ray adds, however, that it is very satisfying to see results, and to know that he’s helping animals.

  RUSS AND I DECIDE TO GO snorkeling despite the possibility of encountering a Tiger Shark. (My semilogical risk assessment goes something like this: the chances of getting attacked by a shark are probably less than the chances of getting into an auto accident back home; since there are no automobiles here, we’ll take our chances with sharks.) Anyway, I want to see the reef and the fishes, and get a sense of what Ray’s been talking about regarding netting.

  This will be a casual, unambitious swim. We seek only to have a look around without getting eaten; that’s all. With such a clear goal, it will be easy to tell if we succeed. The plan is to simply swim out about a hundred yards from the beach with mask and flippers, go around a shallow lava-rock reef, and come back in through a cut in that reef. The whole swim, start to finish, should be about half a mile.

  We enter, put on our flippers, and steadily beat seaward. We’re watching the bottom streaming along slowly. It’s mostly sandy with occasional black lava rocks. Various corals are growing, though sparsely. And as Hugo Schauinsland wrote in 1896, “Fishes of all wonderful shapes and magnificent patterns pass between the corals … . Most pleasing to the eve are the kind that are adorned with lively colors, observed elsewhere only on flowers and butterflies.”

  Swimming flowers, undersea butterflies. We’re seeing big groups of Convict Tangs freely abroad in their striped prison uniforms, and schools of Black Triggerfish with their fine pale-blue outlining stripe. I’m no expert on reef fishes, and this is my first glimpse here, but Russ has been in the area for five months and has developed a good catalog of the underwater fauna and a keen eye. So to help me understand what we’re seeing, we stop frequently at the surface and exchange observations. We build up quite a list for a short visit in the sea. There’s the native Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse, who manages to squeeze yellow, blue, black, and purple into a mere four inches. (The species is endemic, meaning it’s found only in Hawaii.) We also see several red-and-green Christmas Wrasses and the Gray Chub, whose Hawaiian name is Nenue. There’s a polka-dotted female endemic Pearl Wrasse (she’s female because she’s young; as she ages she will change to male and her color will change, as happens in wrasses and certain other fishes). There’s a yellow-and-charcoal juvenile Hawaiian Hogfish, and a Yellowstriped Coris, or Hilu. It was said that two gods who were brothers each took the form of a Hilu. When one was caught by a fisherman and placed on the fire, the other changed to human form to rescue his brother and release him to the sea, but not before he’d been seared with the stripes they all now bear. The Hawaiian name means “well behaved,” and pregnant women who ate this fish expected children who were quiet and refined. We pause to enjoy several Bird Wrasses with their comically beaklike snoot. We also notice other kinds of wrasses: a pink and blue-green Surge Wrasse, abundant Saddle Wrasses, and boldly orange-striped Belted Wrasses, plus a Blacktail Wrasse, the latter three endemic. We see Star-eye Parrotfish, the larger males with magenta lines radiating from their eyes. Most parrotfishes also transform from female to
male as they age, and their colors change radically from juvenile hues to initial-adult shades—some species are initially both sexes simultaneously—to “terminal male” colors. We also notice Bullethead, Spectacled, and Palenosed Parrotfishes—all with their fused, beaklike teeth. It was said that parrotfish behavior told the fisherman what his wife was up to at home: frolicking parrotfishes meant too much levity, and two uhu rubbing noses was a sure sign of flirting going on. We see gold-and-black-banded Moorish Idols with their classically exquisite streaming fins; plus Orangeband, Whitebar, and Goldring Surgeonfishes, and Yellow Tangs—all oval-shaped, peaceful grazers, vet all concealing knifelike scalpels at the base of their tail. Bluespine and Orangespine Unicornfishes likewise swim by, the former sporting a mythic-looking horn, the latter trailing graceful tail filaments and using bright orange warning patches to advertise four tail knives. I notice a Barred Filefish tucked into a crevice, and several Keeltailed Needlefish pressing their long silver bodies close to the undulating, light-dappled surface. Fancifully colored butterflyfishes abound, of the Ornate, Threadfin, Teardrop, Bluestripe, and Milletseed varieties; the latter two are endemic. We also notice Manybar and Sidespot Goalfishes smelling and probing the bottom with their odd little fingerlike goatees.

  I get alongside a Bluefin Trevally; Hawaiian name: Omilu. It’s a beautiful fish, green along the head and back, with a golden eye and a silver belly, all trimmed out in fins that start light electric blue at the base and grade to a deep glowing indigo toward the edges. A golden-green keel runs along its side from the aft third to the base of the tail. Blue freckles predominate on the back, grading to black freckles on the belly, head, and face. The pectoral fin ends in a long, streaming point. Blue trim edges the entire dorsal surface, from just behind the head all the way to the tail, then comes along the belly back toward the head. Just your typical everyday super natural miracle.

  This crystal-clear liquid display is enough to take your mind off Tiger Sharks. But sharks there are, too. In a lava cave about twenty feet down, half a dozen five-foot White-tipped Reef Sharks lie placidly on the shadowed bottom. Usually scrawny and spindly-looking—and shy—these are particularly beefy and sleek—and grouchy. When we dive for a close look they rise up toward us as if to stress that they are annoyed at being disturbed. Their skin shines in the shafts of sunlight like dark nylon, and we take their point seriously and back away.

  The sharks momentarily take our minds off the real danger of the reef: the discarded netting that prompted our swim. Ray and his team have done a good job here, but you can see what they were up against. About every fifty yards you stumble on remnants of another net that they’ve removed. What’s left are some cutoff pieces of rope on the bottom, some anchored remnants of cutaway nets that coral had grown around, and some balled-up monofilament netting that seems anchored in the sand when you dive down and try to tug at it. I’m a bit wary of tugging at nets and ropes. You don’t want to be tugging on a cord that conceals a fishhook when you’re holding your breath and not wearing a knife.

  But, cautious as we are, our most serious error is misjudging the force of the tide draining out through the reef-cut that is our return route. We’ve gone around a long shallow ledge and are working our way back. The more committed to this route we become, the more insuperable the tide, until Russ is struggling to make progress and I’m struggling just to stay in place. Waves from seaward are breaking on the adjacent reef, precluding our trying to swim over the shallow lava rocks—we’d get pummeled there. It seems too far to go all the way back the way we came. But I feel dangerously winded. I can hear my heart pounding from exertion as I’m sucking deeply through the snorkel. Suddenly two unusually large waves sweep in, and we try to catch their swelling force, paddling and pulling with all our remaining energy, using them to shove us through the draining current. It works, and we find ourselves through the narrow cut, and finally we gain the shore.

  On the beach not too far away, a seal pup is waddling toward its mother. They touch noses. The mother scratches herself with a flipper, then plops her head down alongside the pup. The contact seems reassuring to them both.

  It’s reassuring to me, too, to see a haven for such creatures who were once so vulnerable to rapacious men. This is a place of reconciliation now between humans and these animals. Over the course and coarseness of the last century, devastation has been visited and reversed on Laysan. Between the egg thieves and the murderous feather poachers and the guano miners and their rabbits and the bad grass and the abandoned fishing gear, this whole island—remote as it is—has been transformed from its natural state. Problems remain, but improvement prevails.

  Recovery. Restoration. Regeneration. Peace. The change in people’s perspective—from exploitation to restoration, from greed to nurturing—is beautiful in a way that is real and profound, and human in the best sense. It makes me feel lucky to have found a place where the program is to set things right, and proud to live in a time when we are also capable—in our best moments—of higher hope, and healing.

  WORKING IN OVERDRIVE

  A LOT HAS HAPPENED to Tern Island’s albatrosses. This year’s weather has turned deadly. Weather is one of albatrosses’ few natural killers. Adults are capable of shrugging off the planet’s most god-awful gales, but nests and chicks are more fragile. Winds forty to seventy knots can blow eggs from nests. Adults in their faithful trance of incubation and refusing to abandon nests can get buried by blowing sand. Drifting sand sometimes entombs chicks, or piles so heavily into their thick down that small hatchlings cannot rise normally to beg for food. Grown albatrosses can survive at sea in a world of towering waters and spraying winds, but for small chicks not yet waterproof, cold rains can chill and kill.

  The earlier rains left an indelible mark upon this breeding cycle. But the rains are only part of their problem this season. The Honolulu Advertiser has run a front-page headline, ALBATROSSES ABANDONING NESTS IN RECORD NUMBERS. It is true.

  We’re in the hottest, most intense El Niño on record. But this year’s intensified heat is just the most recent spike in a longer trend. Before the 1970s, El Niño occurred about once every five years. But since the late ’70s, the whole Pacific weather pattern has changed, with El Niño conditions fully five out of every seven years. Instead of recurring El Niños every few years, the tropical ocean has been stuck in a weak warm state, with more frequent and more intense El Niños.

  El Niño is the biggest climate variable on Earth, after the yearly four seasons. “El Niño” is the name given to invasions of unusually warm water into the eastern Pacific. What most people know as El Niño, meteorologists call the Southern Oscillation. In simplest terms, here’s the oscillation: air pressure is usually high over the eastern Pacific and low over the western, but sometimes that pattern flips, or oscillates. When air pressure is high over the eastern Pacific—as it “normally” is—winds blow from east to west. Winds blowing away from the coast of the Americas drive warm surface water seaward, causing much cooler water to rise to the surface. Think of blowing across a cup of hot coffee. The surfacing of deep, cold water is called upwelling. As we’ve seen, upwelling deep water brings new nutrients, supporting plankton production in surface waters; and the enhanced productivity ripples up the food chain, supporting squids, fishes, whales, seals, birds, and human fisheries. Every few years the air pressure reverses, and the winds weaken. The warm water comes flooding back, changing the heat balance of the entire ocean. That’s El Niño.

  When that warm water comes sloshing back, it shuts off upwelling. As the winds slacken, the warm surface layer extends deeper and deeper, and the wind becomes even less able to break through the warm water to mix cooler nutrient-rich water up into the sunlit shallow zone, where the plant plankton need it to live. With this undernourishment of the surface waters, ocean productivity crashes. Vast numbers of oceanic creatures starve. (To cite just one example: in one El Niño an estimated twenty million Guanay Cormorants died along Peru’s coast.)

 
Amelia’s world feels the flood of warm waters that lower food density throughout the whole eastern ocean. But humans contend with the effects of El Niño in many ways, usually without realizing the connections. El Niño creates floods in some places, droughts in others; it affects billions of animals, influences agriculture over an astonishingly large portion of the landed world, intensifies hurricanes, and brings milder temperatures to places normally cold in winter. Warmer seas have helped cholera incubate inside ocean plankton, facilitating later infectious epidemics in heavily populated coastal places. Some researchers have even linked past El Niños to weather conditions triggering sudden crop failures, outbreaks of influenza, smallpox and malaria, droughts, the blight that caused the Irish potato famine, and the Black Death of the fourteenth century. In one of its most bizarre effects, the intense 1997—98 El Niño brought such mild temperatures to the American Midwest that it prompted unusually active winter retail shopping in Chicago, leading to record sales for January, February, and March.

  During the 1997—98 El Niño, the Horn of Africa got as much as forty times the normal rainfall, isolating villages, obliterating roads, and precipitating tens of thousands of cases of disease. In November 1998 Hurricane Mitch, nourished by a warmed Caribbean, killed eleven thousand people, triggered thirty thousand cases of cholera, fanned malaria and dengue-fever outbreaks, and caused $5 billion in damage. Scientists predicted these events five months before they happened—by tracking sea-surface temperature. All around the world, the costs of extreme weather grew exponentially in the 1990s. The 1998 losses alone ($90 billion that year) dwarfed total 1980s losses ($55 billion for the whole decade).