Albatrosses are among the world's most spectacular seabirds, capable of living over 70 years. Their welfare is threatened by plastic pollution, longline fisheries bycatch, and climate-driven changes to their foraging grounds.
Albatross welfare threats operate across their extraordinary lifespans. Chicks fed plastic by parents experience gastrointestinal obstruction, malnutrition, and in severe cases fatal bowel perforation. Chicks that survive to fledging may carry plastic loads that impair long-term health. Adults hooked on longlines experience drowning - some drown immediately; others are dragged underwater and drown slowly. Injured birds that survive line contact with hooks embedded in their flesh face chronic infection and feeding impairment. The longevity of albatrosses means that individual welfare events - plastic accumulation, hook injury - can affect animals across decades of life. The long reproductive cycle (one chick every two years in some species) means each reproductive failure has compounding population consequences.