Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival

By Mccabe Coolidge

For a number of years, I was haunted by a recurring dream. I’d climb to the top of the mast of my sailboat and search the gray clouded sky, seeing only a big pale bird way off, flying alone, away from me, away from land. I wondered then if it was an albatross, exiled from land, flying for the rest of its days and nights over open ocean. I wonder now what I was searching for, climbing the mast of my sailboat, scanning, scanning the horizon.

On Palm Sunday, I was standing on the edge of Kiluaea Point, a National Wildlife Refuge, gazing out at the Pacific, a steady swell rolls in and thousands of seabirds are circling. This furthermost eastern edge of Kauai is a sanctuary for frigatebirds, shearwaters, red-footed boobies, and albatross. A halfway point, a resting place, a time to court, breed, nest, and feed. To my left is Albatross Hill, an acre or so of green lawn used as a landing strip by the albatross. Along the edges of this airfield the courtship has begun, duck and bob, duck and bob, circle and circle. A delicate dance often lasting fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, on the landing strip, a few albatross are attempting take-offs, a wobbly walk into the breeze, the flapping of wings and airlift. Landings are less sure. Upon landing, there is much toppling over, apparently no hurt pride. Hundreds and hundreds of albatross are crowded around this spit of land. I’ve come here in celebration of my 60th birthday. A wish stretching back a quarter of a century. A need to follow a dream and find the pale, white bird.

Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean, brings us a fascinating tale of Amelia, a "tagged" albatross who courts, gives birth to a fledgling, and flies thousands of miles in search of food. Carl follows her, first by GPS, then by heading out to sea on an old wooden halibut schooner, repowered for longline fishing in the Aleutian waters off the coast of Alaska. But mostly Carl lives on a tiny dot of an island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, French Frigate Shoals and Tern Island. A center of research for eighteen species of seabirds, six million of them densely populated on a string of islands 500 miles northwest of Kauai.

My dream haunted me because I thought of the albatross as a burden. Around the neck. An individual sin inherited from the sailor who shot one and it was hung around his neck, a retribution for the slaughter and ensuing bad luck. Safina brings us to a deeper, clearer understanding of the story with the help of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

The spirit who bideth by himself

in the land of mist and snow

He loved the bird that loved the man

who shot him with his bow.

Safina tells us that great wandering albatross means, "out of one’s country, living in exile. Sailors and naturalists, on multi-year voyages may have thought this, but the albatross is at home in the wild, wide ocean." At home in the wild, wide ocean. How do you and I define home? Images related to land or water?

One night, on a sail from San Francisco to San Diego, about 50 miles offshore, the crew and I were joined by a shearwater. Wide dark wings, small eyes clearly focused on the next wave, barely moving its wings, we were on a broad reach, the wind sweeping off our left shoulders. Mile after mile, hour after hour, we were accompanied by this night visitor. But now I wonder, who was the visitor? Maybe our sloop found its way into the ancient migration pathway of this bird, unflinching, moving ahead, a shadow, a night angel.

But why spend so many months crowded on a little island with a couple of dozen other researchers? No videos, radio, stores, or other diversions except the continual presence of birds, monk seals, and green turtles.

Safina describes how the ancient Polynesian mariners used instinct, memory, and observation to direct their ships from island to island, thousands of miles apart. These sailors watched the albatross, the shearwater, the subtlety of waves running across the dominant swells, often reflecting a distant unseen island. These ancient mariners, when passing an island, memorized its location in relation to the stars rising and setting.

Amelia, named by Safina, is tagged so she can be followed on her forays out into the Pacific for food for her baby chick. He is amazed, as am I, by how long and fast she flies; her wings, hitched into a gliding position, she flies hundreds of miles a day and after a week, two or three finds her way back to the speck of the island, regurgitates her fishing finds, squid usually, into the hungry beak of her chick. Then, the father takes off while his mate rests. What navigational instincts does Amelia possess? What can we learn from her?

Safina points out plenty of problems along the way. Watching a mother regurgitate a toothbrush into her chick’s mouth. Longliners overfishing almost every fish in the Pacific. Albatross diving for the bait getting entangled into the longline and drowning. Can you believe that longlined Blue Finned Tuna come off the boat for $300-800 a pound bound for Japan?

Coleridge kept writing the long poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Near the conclusion, he gives us these lines:

...he prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God, who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

And then several years later, Coleridge adds this summation:

...everything has life of its own

and we are all one life.

Reading the Eye of the Albatross is a way to fall in love with birds and sea. Safina "prayest best" by loving the albatross with the passion of curiosity. How do these birds navigate an open (not empty) ocean and return, voyage after voyage, year after year?

Safina is a monk. One who gazes, watches, notes, stays day after day, in love with the prospect of life, reproduction, the passing on of genes and destiny. The ancient rhythm of migration and return. Then he returns to the mainland and reports back to us what he has seen and heard. Out there. Beyond human habitation.

In the United States, we have Earth Day, Solstice Days, but when the Day of the Ocean came this spring, what happened? I’m not living in Kansas. I live along the coast of North Carolina, filled with bays, rivers, estuaries, where the health of the ocean and her tributaries means survival to thousands of watermen and women. No celebrations like Earth Day. Writers like Safina will help us embrace a strange nonwestern notion, that the earth is not the center of the universe but is an island in the open sea. How goes the wild sea and her inhabitants is a telling sign of survival for those of us living on land.

The other evening at a Sierra Club meeting I heard, once again, a speaker tell me that wilderness had to do with valleys, mountains, plateaus, and rivers. No mention of the ocean as wild sanctuary, a wilderness threatened, the compass of our survival.

Safina warns us about projecting our own imagery, our own reflections into what we are seeing. For me, the albatross is no longer the bird of exile, of burden. How difficult would it be to say out loud, "Our survival is dependent upon the survival of the albatross?" Saying yes is affirming that "everything has a life of its own and we are all one life," that we are mutually dependent. We become the Polynesian mariner, guided by stars and birds.

Standing and watching, ohhhing and ahhhing, Kilauea Point is not a quiet place. This promontory, unlike the nave of a sanctuary filled with silence, is raucous with the call of birds. We humans, we were the ones with pursed lips, expectant hearts, raised eyebrows. We were the ones invited in, to stand, gaze and stand vigil as life’s migration unfolded in front of us. We were the spectators, not the actors. We were the students, watching and learning.

When I climbed that mast and searched the open waters, maybe I was looking for a way into a deeper life, the longer voyage, across windpaths, led by a bird, wild, wise, and patient, a journey toward a further home, not defined by ground but by the rolling swell of the sea.

This afternoon, my friend Willi and I will pull up the main, jib, and mizzen of my sharpie and head out to sea, past Shakleford Banks, Ft. Macon jetty. What will we find? I’m not worried. I love the act of gazing, opening the portals of the nostril, angling the eardrum, sensing the wind on the backside of my head. Like tuning a guitar, I’ll be ready for what already is. I’m just joining the procession, the migration of blues, dolphins, and the happy sighting of a black skimmer returning to the barrier islands.