Wandering albatrosses exert high take-off effort only when both wind and waves are gentle

• Published in: eLife
• Main Authors: Leo Uesaka, Yusuke Goto, Masaru Naruoka, Henri Weimerskirch, Katsufumi Sato, Kentaro Q Sakamoto
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2023
• Subjects: seabird; biologging; ocean environment; take-off; wandering albatross; Medicine; R; Science; Q; Biology (General); QH301-705.5; Wandering Albatross
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.87016; https://doaj.org/article/da0f0ed175514593a049b4a9cde4d109

The relationship between the environment and marine animal small-scale behavior is not fully understood. This is largely due to the difficulty in obtaining environmental datasets with a high spatiotemporal precision. The problem is particularly pertinent in assessing the influence of environmental factors in rapid, high energy-consuming behavior such as seabird take-off. To fill the gaps in the existing environmental datasets, we employed novel techniques using animal-borne sensors with motion records to estimate wind and ocean wave parameters and evaluated their influence on wandering albatross take-off patterns. Measurements revealed that wind speed and wave heights experienced by wandering albatrosses during take-off ranged from 0.7 to 15.4 m/s and 1.6 to 6.4 m, respectively. The four indices measured (flapping number, frequency, sea surface running speed, and duration) also varied with the environmental conditions (e.g., flapping number varied from 0 to over 20). Importantly, take-off was easier under higher wave conditions than under lower wave conditions at a constant wind speed, and take-off effort increased only when both wind and waves were gentle. Our data suggest that both ocean waves and winds play important roles for albatross take-off and advances our current understanding of albatross flight mechanisms.