You may have never seen an albatross, but you must have heard the legend of this giant seabird.
They can live for 60 years, and when they find a partner, they are loyal to each other and never separate. They are more than a meter long, with wings outstretched, and a wingspan of up to 3 to 4 meters. When they fly at sea, the air currents are at their disposal, the sky is at their disposal, they can not flap their wings for hours, or they can cross more than a hundred kilometers of ocean in an hour. They relax in the wind, sleep at sea, and can not go ashore at all unless they are to build a nest and lay eggs to feed the next generation.
Powerful albatrosses should have been carefree, but today, all 22 species of albatrosses in the world are in jeopardy, at least fragile, some near-threatened, and 10 are even endangered or critically endangered.
Humans capture them. Invasive species such as rats and feral cats steal their eggs. Their favorite fish has been drastically reduced by overfishing. They accidentally swallow marine debris such as plastic bags that can poison them. Hooks, lines and nets in the sea can wind them to death...
A dead albatross with a belly full of plastic garbage ↓↓↓
They die too quickly, they grow too slowly, and it takes two years to breed a chick, and they may not succeed.
When I was a child, the albatross was such a big hairball, and the human next to it was Lord Edinburgh ↓↓↓
In order to protect them, they need to be studied. However, many albatrosses have retreated to the most remote islands, struggling to survive in places that are still difficult for humans to reach for the time being. Going up to those islands to count albatrosses is also quite difficult for researchers... For example, the northern royal albatrosses lived only on the cliffs of the Chatham Islands, and scientists once waited a month to get to that island to wait for the right weather. Besides, human activities may also disturb birds, how difficult it is for people to talk about raising babies, what if you accidentally do something bad?
Traditional research method - counting human flesh ↓↓↓
So scientists thought of satellites!
Speaking of which, the British scientist Peter T. Fretwell is also a "satellite photo number animal madman". His past research has included counting penguins with satellite images and whales with satellite images. He also plans to use satellites to count pelicans, swans, geese, flamingos, wildebeests, polar bears... Therefore, it seems very logical to use satellite pictures to count albatrosses.
The WorldView-3 (WV-3) satellite he used this time can reach a resolution of 30 centimeters.
They first counted the wandering albatrosses on Bird Island in South Georgia, Argentina, using satellites, compared them with the results of manual counting, and found that this solution worked well and worked well. Then, take the satellite to count the particularly difficult northern royal albatrosses.
Each small white dot is actually an albatross oh ↓↓↓
However, their results this time are actually not very optimistic. According to satellite images, the number of northern Royal Albatrosses on the Chatham Islands is only 3600 litters, much less than the 5700 clutches of human flesh in 2009, which is much lower than expected. Secondly, the success rate of those albatrosses in raising babies is not high. Probably because in 1985, a tropical storm destroyed much of the island's vegetation. Although vegetation has been slowly recovering since then, this has left many albatross nests without coverage. When the nest is exposed, both the egg and the chick are more susceptible to injury.
A seemingly insignificant tropical storm may cause long-term damage to a species. When global warming increases and extreme weather increases, such tragedies may increase.
Or hope that the new technology will help scientists better understand the albatross and better help the albatross. Some people use technology to destroy, some people use technology to save, in the end, the key is still the people who use technology.
Look at these big hairy masses, I hope that our children and grandchildren can still share the same blue sky with them ↓↓↓
Peter T. Fretwell, Paul Scofield, Richard A. Phillips. Using super-high resolution satellite imagery to census threatened albatrosses. Ibis, 2017; DOI: 10.1111/ibi.12482
Scientists use satellites to count endangered birds from space. (2017). ScienceDaily.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170504083234.htm
Yurieff, K. (2017). Scientists can now count endangered birds using satellite imagery from space. CNNMoney. http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/04/technology/endangered-birds-space-satellite/index.html
Albatrosses counted from space - BBC News. (2017). BBC News.http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39797373
Fretwell, Peter T., et al. "An emperor penguin population estimate: the first global, synoptic survey of a species from space." PLoS One 7.4 (2012): e33751.
Fretwell, Peter T., Iain J. Staniland, and Jaume Forcada. "Whales from space: counting southern right whales by satellite." PLoS One 9.2 (2014): e88655.