Its world albatross day (June 19th) – here are some facts you might now know about his magnificent bird
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a sailor kills an albatross and thereafter, as a punishment, is forced to wear its carcass around his neck. And so albatrosses came unfairly to represent a burden from which one couldn’t escape. However, the literary phrase has it all backwards. It fails to capture the terrible burden humans place on this group of huge, majestic seabirds, which range widely across the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific.
Albatrosses are stunning, long-lived seabirds that spend much of their lives soaring over the ocean. Inevitably, this lifestyle brings them into contact with fishing vessels. Sadly, they’re often accidentally captured in fishing gear, driving declines in their population. 15 of the 22 albatross species are now threatened with extinction.
