The teaching albatross

[mella l]

Makana Hawaiian for gift is a teaching albatross who was adopted from Hawaii bird reserve by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Read this article this afternoon and it is powerful. I thought some of my Hawaiian friends might like to read it.

Some highlights
plastic debris each year kills 40% of newly hatched albatross, as their parents see shiny things on the surf, ingest them and feed them to the chicks.

Makana was not injured this way but is permanently grounded because of a dislocated carpus in her left wing.

The United Nations estimated that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every square mile of ocean.

The Laysan albatross are know to live more than 50 years and have a 6 foot wing span at adult age.

Very interesting article, and informative. Cary I hope to one day help with the clean up of the sea in Hawaii. If recycling were taken more to heart the problem of this sea litter would be greatly diminished.

Just food for thought. SF Chron no subscription necessary.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/21/BAG5JQIMD584.DTL&hw=makana&sn=001&sc=1000

Or google sfgate.com do internal search for Makana and you will see the beautiful pictures.


mella l

[Carey]

Mella, the Mokupapapa Center had a great presentation last summer given by some of the people working at the the NW Hawaiian Island Sanctuary. They had photos of Laysans feeding their chicks garbage, and of the stomach contents of some of the chicks that had died. This is one of the things that keeps me coordinating & doing the Coastal Cleanups. The thought that any & all of those little pieces of litter could end up as food for some of the marine animals that I moved here to study.
I truly do not think most people even think about the impact that a cigarrette butt, bottle cap or the can tab that they pitched might have on the wildlife. If they did, I cannot believe that they would still flick their butts about.

Edited by - carey on 06/21/2007 14:25:26

[Carolann R]

Since our daughter is here we rented Happy Feet...which was much more than just a cartoon about penguins. It's so good to see this important environmental issue instilled in our kids through the hypnosis of animation!

Carrie

"All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it." Bob Newhart

[Les C]

A few years ago, I led a group of birders around the Islands and we were able to access Midway Atoll. Tens of thousands of albatross, Laysan, Black-footed, and a handful of Short-tailed, nest and visit there. It is incredible how many small plastic things show up there, mostly carried in the gut of these squid-feeding birds. Jack Jeffrey, renown Hawaiian bird photographer and biologist, told me that when he worked on a bird monitoring project on Kure Atoll, the last bit of islands in the Northwest Chain, they collected all the plastic that they could and made a large pile more than 6' tall. Most of the plastic pieces are Bic-like cigarette lighters, along with various sailing and fishing bits. Absolutely incredible! Also, the fledging albatross on Midway have another toxin to be protected from: bits of lead-based paint flaking off the old barracks and other building left over from the military presence. The FWS is slowly removing some old buildings and scraping/repainting others.