Albatross Island’s residents being monitored with love by Rachael Alderman

TWICE a year, Rachael Alderman and her team hitch a ride to a remote island and spend a week monitoring Shy Albatrosses.

TWAM-20150228 EMBARGO FOR TWAM 28 feb 2015 NO REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION Albatross Island Pic : Matthew Newton

IN 1798, when explorers Matthew Flinders and George Bass were attempting the first circumnavigation of Van Diemen’s Land, they landed their sloop Norfolk at a tiny island off the northwest coast for a spot of shooting, and found it so packed with Shy Albatrosses that Bass had to “make a road with his club” through them.

Things have changed since then – the population was almost wiped out by decades of harvesting for their feathers, for use in hats, quilts and pillows – but Albatross Island remains one of only three breeding colonies in Australia, with more than 5000 pairs.

Twice a year, Dr Rachael Alderman and her team hitch a ride there on an abalone boat, and spend a week fitting GPS trackers and leg-bands to the birds as part of a monitoring program that’s been going since 1980. Shy Albatrosses are remarkable creatures: they mate for life, and are monogamous (“although when you look closely there’s plenty of sneaky mating with other birds going on,” Alderman says), and each pair shares the work of sitting on their single egg and raising the chick. When a young bird fledges, it goes off to sea and doesn’t return to the island for up to six years. And they can live for over 30 years – if they don’t fall foul of a fishing boat (they often swallow the baited hooks laid by longliners, or get caught up in trawling mechanisms).

Alderman, 37, had a nomadic upbringing as an army child, so the rigours of island life – camping in a cave, and bathing in rockpools – don’t bother her. Despite how it looks in the photo, the birds are stressed by the handling but won’t budge because they’re defending their eggs. They’ll bite, though, and direct a stream of fish-oil vomit – a defence mechanism – at her. “It’s not exactly glamorous work,” Alderman says. “When I get back to Hobart, my clothes go on the washing line for weeks.”