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

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 ∼ 15.4 m/s and 1.6 ∼ 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 suggests that both ocean waves and winds play important roles for albatross take-off and advances our current understanding of albatross flight mechanisms. Impact statement Wind and ocean wave conditions experienced by albatrosses were estimated using an animal-borne recorder and revealed that take-off was easier under higher wave conditions.

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