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It is likely to have a major impact on efforts to conserve the Northern Royals (Diomedea sanfordi).
Ordinarily, these birds are very difficult to appraise because their nesting sites are so inaccessible.
Not only are the sea-stacks far from NZ (680km), but their vertical cliffs mean that any visiting scientist
might also have to be adept at rock climbing.
"Getting the people, ships or planes to these islands to count the birds is expensive, but it can be very
dangerous as well," explained Dr Peter Fretwell from BAS.
This makes the DigitalGlobe WorldView-3 satellite something of a breakthrough.
It can acquire pictures of Earth that capture features as small as 30cm across.
The US government has only recently permitted such keen resolution to be distributed outside of the
military and intelligence sectors.
WorldView-3 can see the nesting birds as they sit on eggs to incubate them or as they guard newly hatched
chicks.
With a body length of over a metre, the adult albatrosses only show up as two or three pixels, but their
white plumage makes them stand out against the surrounding vegetation. The BAS team literally counts the
dots.
The researchers first checked their methodology at Bird Island, South Georgia.
This is a unique nature reserve in the South Atlantic where the nests of another species of great albatross,
the Wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), are individually marked with GPS locators.
The biggest confounding factor is large, light-coloured rocks. But the analysis showed the team could get a
very close match between the pixelated birds in the space images and the nests that were recorded in the
ground-truth data.
There tends to be a slight over-counting, which the team puts down to breeding partners or non-breeding
birds also being captured in a satellite scene.
Applying the technique at the Chatham Islands, the team counted just over 3,600 nests. This is slightly
down on a manual count of 5,700 that was made in 2009.
Dr Fretwell said: "The breeding numbers we counted were much lower than we anticipated, which could
show us that the population is declining or it could show just that we had a particularly poor year. But this
illustrates why you have to do this over several years, and doing it by satellite is going be a lot cheaper and
more efficient."
Like the other five species of great albatross, Northern Royals are under pressure for a variety of reasons.
Commercial fishing has depleted the stocks on which these seabirds also feed, and the baited longline gear
used by some vessels has an unpleasant knack for attracting foragers and pulling them underwater where
they drown.
But the Northern Royals in particular are vulnerable because of their desire to nest only on the Chatham
Islands sea-stacks. If one big storm rolls through at the wrong time of year, it can severely dent breeding
success.
"In 1986, a huge storm washed waves over these 50m-tall islands," said Dr Scofield.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39797373