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

• Published in: eLife
• Main Authors: Uesaka, Leo, Goto, Yusuke, Naruoka, Masaru, Weimerskirch, Henri, Sato, Katsufumi, Sakamoto, Kentaro Q
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2023
• Subjects: Ecology; Wandering Albatross
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10564450/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37814539; https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.87016

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.