Albatross

An albatross is a large seabird of the Southern Ocean and North Pacific, adapted to travel vast distances over open water with dynamic and slope soaring.

Dynamic soaring: A flight technique that extracts energy from differences in wind speed at different heights. Albatrosses use wind gradients above the sea to glide for hours with little flapping.
Procellariiformes: An order of seabirds that includes albatrosses, petrels, and shearwaters. Albatrosses belong to this group, whose members share tube-like nostrils and marine adaptations.
Wandering albatross: A large albatross of the Southern Ocean, famous for its exceptionally long wings. It exemplifies the family’s extreme wingspan and long-distance ocean travel.
Longline fishing: A fishing method that sets a line carrying many baited hooks behind a vessel. Albatrosses can seize baited hooks and drown when they are pulled underwater.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: A narrative poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798. The poem made the albatross a lasting literary emblem of guilt and burden.
Slope soaring: A flight technique in which rising air deflected by terrain provides lift. Waves and ocean swells can deflect wind upward, giving albatrosses another source of lift.
Diomedeidae: The seabird family that contains all albatross species. This family is the taxonomic home of every living albatross.
Laysan albatross: A North Pacific albatross that breeds on islands, including the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Its colonies illustrate how remote islands anchor the breeding lives of pelagic birds.
Bycatch: Animals caught unintentionally while fishing for other species. Fishing bycatch is a major source of human-caused albatross mortality.
Albatross (metaphor): A persistent burden or obstacle, especially one that seems difficult to escape. This figurative meaning derives from the bird's role in Coleridge's poem.

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