Already, several birds have logged marathon flights including a 4,172-mile round trip to Alaska's Aleutian Islands and a 5,348-mile round trip to the San Francisco Bay. Some of the birds have even returned to the same location on successive feeding trips.
"My motivation for doing this is three-fold," Anderson explained. "First, there are basic science questions that the data will help us answer. We know that albatross populations seem to be declining worldwide because of contact with fisheries, and if we can determine where the feeding zones are, they can be targeted for some action.
"Second, I am interested in pre-college education and this project seemed the perfect opportunity to engage school-age kids with our work," he said. "And scientifically, the albatross has long been an interest to me as an evolutionary biologist because of their extremely slow reproduction.
"They put off breeding for the first time until they are seven or eight years old," he said. "The robin in your back yard is breeding the first year."
Anderson's project combines the high-tech of orbiting satellites and tiny transmitters smaller than a dollar bill with the high-touch, interpersonal world of classroom learning.
Each time they pass over the northern Pacific, the Argos System's satellites scan for the signals emitted by the seabirds' transmitters. If a positive contact is made, the satellite notes the strength of the signal and then locks in the latitude and longitude, time and other data and transmits it to receiving stations in Fairbanks, Alaska; Lannion, France; or Wallops Island off the coast of Virginia.
At 1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time each morning, a processing statio
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Contact: Wayne Thompson
thompsow@wfu.edu
910-758-4393
Wake Forest University
5-Jan-1998