South Island 04/09 Otago Peninsula Royal Albatross Colony

We visited the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head...the most eastern part of the peninsula. This is the world's only mainland royal albatross colony. Once the chicks are old enough they take off to fly and don't land on mainland for years until they breed. Here we are demonstrating below an albatross model..that the wingspan is 3 metres. We resolved after visiting this centre to really really try to buy and use less plastic. Apparently there are parts of the ocean that are like floating plastic wastelands and the birds will often eat plastic not knowing if is not food and then they will feed their chicks. The chicks die as their stomach fills up with plastic and there is no room for anything else. Here is a picture of the plastic taken from one chick's stomach.
And again here is an albatross chick with a stomach full of plastic. Very sad