The number of seabirds nesting at Midway Atoll has hit a record high.
The Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument said Friday volunteers counted more than 660,000 pairs of Laysan albatross at Midway this nesting season.
They also counted 28,610 pairs of black-footed albatross at the small atoll about 1,200 miles northwest of Honolulu.
The previous record for Laysan albatross was nearly 490,000 pairs in 2006. The record for black-footed albatross was 28,581 in 2011.
This year’s final count was for nearly 1.4 million individual birds.
An albatross sitting on an egg in a nest represents a breeding pair and was counted once. Birds present but not on an egg may be immature, unpaired or just resting. They weren’t counted.