Thirty young seabirds left an island, all heading to the same sea hotspot

A Sable Shearwater chick leaves Lord Howe Island only once as a fledgling, having never flown further than its burrow entrance, never fed itself, and never seen the open ocean. Researchers at Adrift Lab attached solar-powered GPS tags to thirty of these young birds as they prepared to leave in 2022 and 2024, tracking where their first-ever journey took them. The results, published in the journal Animal Biotelemetry titled ‘Post-fledging migration of Sable Shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes) identifies the Solomon Sea as a potential conservation priority,’ pointed to a place few people had ever thought to look, the Solomon Sea.