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Graham Parker and Kalinka Rexer spend a lot of time living on remote specks in the ocean. They’ve worked with wandering albatrosses on Gough Island, a dot in the middle of the southern Atlantic, and southern royal albatrosses on Campbell Island, in New Zealand’s subantarctic. But Antipodean albatrosses are different.
“It was quite striking, the level of aggression,” says Rexer-Huber. Male albatrosses—she calls them “blokes”—arguing, fighting. Ganging up on females as soon as they landed on the island, six blokes at a time, all trying to mate with one bird. “We’ve not seen that before to that degree.”
So many females had been killed at sea that there was now a serious population imbalance. Three blokes for every female.
Shot on assignment for New Zealand Geographic Issue: 182 July /August 2023.
Read the Feature: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/summer-33/
Photograph Richard Robinson © 2023.
Rights managed image. No Reproduction without prior written permission.
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Richard Robinson © 2023. No Reproduction without prior written permission.
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ANTIPODEAN ALBATROSS
Graham Parker and Kalinka Rexer spend a lot of time living on remote specks in the ocean. They’ve worked with wandering albatrosses on Gough Island, a dot in the middle of the southern Atlantic, and southern royal albatrosses on Campbell Island, in New Zealand’s subantarctic. But Antipodean albatrosses are different.<br /> “It was quite striking, the level of aggression,” says Rexer-Huber. Male albatrosses—she calls them “blokes”—arguing, fighting. Ganging up on females as soon as they landed on the island, six blokes at a time, all trying to mate with one bird. “We’ve not seen that before to that degree.”<br /> So many females had been killed at sea that there was now a serious population imbalance. Three blokes for every female.<br /> Shot on assignment for New Zealand Geographic Issue: 182 July /August 2023.<br /> Read the Feature: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/summer-33/<br /> Photograph Richard Robinson © 2023.<br /> Rights managed image. No Reproduction without prior written permission.