Differential impacts of wind and waves on albatross flight performance in two ocean basins
Ian J Maywar, Richard A Phillips, Rachael A Orben, Melinda G Conners, Scott A Shaffer, Lesley H Thorne · 2025
Read Differential impacts of wind and waves on albatross flight performance in two ocean basins by Ian J Maywar, Richard A Phillips, Rachael A Orben, Melinda G Conners, Scott A Shaffer, Lesley H Thorne (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12781567.txt.
Description
Albatrosses cross whole oceans by riding wind, but ocean waves may give them a second free lift that studies have mostly ignored. Ian Maywar and co-authors measured that wave effect in this 2025 study. They tracked flap rates in five albatross species, covering three hundred and seventy birds across two ocean basins.
When birds could use both wind and swell, flapping dropped by roughly nine tenths in all species. Flap rates shifted with wind speed and wave height in patterns that differed between the two basins. Saving flight energy matters most in the breeding season, when parents commute vast distances to feed chicks. Counting waves as well as wind gives a truer picture of how these seabirds budget energy and where they can thrive.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ian J Maywar, Richard A Phillips, Rachael A Orben, Melinda G Conners, Scott A Shaffer, Lesley H Thorne |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 47 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |