If you were an albatross, where would you nest? On the long plains behind a sheltering lump of fern, halfway up a steep tussocky slope, or on a ridgeline, with a view to the sea, the perfect launch spot for your chicks to learn to feel the wind? They all have their merits. Antipodean albatrosses are very site-faithful, and once they have chosen a place to nest (often not far from where they fledged from as a chick), they will tend to stick with it. At a wider scale, seabirds like albatrosses have strong links to the individual islands, the homelands where they were born. The vast majority of them will return there to nest, rather than striking out to find somewhere new. It means that their populations can be at high risk if their island homes are compromised – by introduced predators, or other developments that change the habitat the birds have chosen to live in. If changing ocean temperatures mean that their food sources get further away, they travel further.

Antipodes Island is free from introduced predators, so the homeland for these albatrosses is safe. Their home-seas, however, are full of risk. When we think about seabird conservation, while breeding grounds are important, the place where seabirds spend most of their lives, where they gather food to grow their chicks, is also vital. Protections for the oceans that sustain these species, and ourselves, are lagging behind our land-based conservation efforts.