Albatross colony at Kaena Point gets new life

Two years ago Wednesday, Oahu’s largest Laysan albatross colony at Kaena Point suffered a shocking blow when vandals viciously attacked the vulnerable seabirds and smashed many of their eggs.

The heinous act and the trial that followed made the national news and sent waves of sadness among animal lovers across Hawaii and the mainland.

Now, in what some are calling a Christmas gift, the crippled bird population has received a boost in the form of an infusion of healthy, fertile eggs.

Conservationists last week teamed up with the U.S. Navy to translocate 21 Laysan albatross eggs to Kaena Point Natural Area Reserve from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.

“It’s a win-win situation for the albatross here and for the Navy,” said Eric Vanderwerf, director of science with the nonprofit Pacific Rim Conservation, which has been studying the albatrosses at remote Kaena Point for 15 years.

The Navy’s long-term goal, Vanderwerf said, is to eliminate the air-strike hazard represented by the albatross nesting near the base’s runway on Kauai.

“And the Kaena Point colony is getting a boost to help get it back on the path where it would have been headed anyway,” he said.

A Navy aircraft on Dec. 19 transported the eggs from Kauai in a foam-padded cooler that also functioned as an incubator. Crew members handed the eggs off to the Pacific Rim Conservation team and then carried them by hand and by four-wheel-drive vehicle to Kaena Point.

At the colony site, the team delicately replaced previously verified infertile eggs with the new fertile arrivals, leaving the nesting adults to serve as surrogate parents for the eggs, which will hatch in a couple of months.

The nesting process is a fascinating affair for the Laysan albatross, which is labeled “near threatened” in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

From November to June or July, one parent sits atop the egg while the other one searches for food. The large seabirds prefer cold-water fish and as one parent stays put, the other flies from Hawaii to Alaska and back again over a 10-day period.

This happens over and over, with the male and female albatross taking turns heading out and returning with bellies full of food that is regurgitated to feed to the chick.

Vanderwerf said the young albatrosses will grow big enough to fly in five months and will return to the same location to nest for the rest of their life.

In the 1980s the protected species began nesting at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, setting up the potential for air collisions. Today, 65 nests are found in the vicinity of the runway, and the Navy is working to reduce the size of the colony — and aiming to eventually eliminate it — by translocating the eggs.

Michelle Paduani, the facility’s environmental program director, said hundreds of Laysan albatross eggs have been relocated from the missile range over the past dozen years, many to private properties on Kauai. She said 48 eggs were translocated last year.

Ideally, the eggs would be moved elsewhere on Kauai, Vanderwerf said, but the island doesn’t have enough foster nests. In the past, some of the eggs were moved for hand-rearing to James Campbell Wildlife Refuge on Oahu’s North Shore. But this year Kaena Point got to benefit.

A 19-year-old Punahou School graduate was sentenced this summer to 45 days in jail, a $1,000 fine and 200 hours of community service for killing 16 adult albatrosses and destroying 17 nests and eggs on Dec. 27, 2015.

Christian Gutierrez was camping at Kaena Point Natural Area Reserve with former schoolmates during his winter school break from New York University. Two former Punahou students, who were juveniles at the time, were also accused of participating in the killing spree. Their cases were handled in state Family Court, where proceedings are confidential.

Prior to the massacre, there were 97 nests at Kaena Point, Vanderwerf said. This year the count increased to an all-time high of 105. Vanderwerf figures there would be at least a dozen more nests had the killings not occurred.

“It was pretty disturbing,” the scientist said, looking back. “It was definitely a blow — but not a fatal blow.”