Keeping track of albatrosses

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Conservation Department ranger Colin Facer (left) and Royal Albatross Centre head ranger Lyndon Perriman fit a tracking device to 6-year-old male albatross Green-blue-black at Taiaroa Head this week. Photo by the Royal Albatross Centre.

Many parents might like tracking devices fitted to their children before they head off on their big OE - but Department of Conservation staff this week made the desire a reality, attaching solar-powered transmitters to two young albatrosses due to leave the area this summer.

Department of Conservation head ranger Taiaroa Lyndon Perriman and Massey University doctoral student Bindi Thomson fitted $5000 transmitters to a male and female bird, both aged 5 or 6, which had arrived at the Taiaroa Heads colony in December.

The tracking technology means Doc for the first time will be able to build a picture of the feeding behaviour and migratory patterns of adolescent birds for up to a year.

Previously, researchers were only able make assumptions on these patterns after studying dead birds washed up in South America.

"They should leave here around March and we should see if they spend time around South America or if they go around the world four or five times before returning [to New Zealand] to breed.

''They spend up to 80% of their life at sea . . .

''Because of this and limitations with the gear, there are many mysteries we may have never solved," Mr Perriman said.

Staff were well prepared to gently fit the transmitters to the birds after practising several "dummy runs" with a stuffed albatross.

A device fitted to the 500th chick hatched in the colony's 70-year breeding history, Toroa, stopped transmitting on September 24 last year.

The lightweight satellite transmitters attached to the bird's back feathers sent its GPS location every six hours pinpointing the bird's location to within 15m.

Its progress was plotted via satellite every sixth day for mapping and analysis.

Toroa recorded a maximum speed of 109kmh.

The maximum altitude he reached above sea level was 29m, and flew a maximum daily distance of 1020km, recorded in October 2008 when crossing the Southern Ocean.

Transmission from two fledgling birds 55027 and 55029 stopped late last year.

Transmitters fitted this week were funded by the Otago Peninsula Trust.

Tracking details on the birds tagged this week should be available on www.albatross.org.nz [2] next week.