Foreword HRH Prince Charles Albatrosses are iconic creatures, a flagship species for the conservation of the oceans as a whole, just as rhinos, pandas and tigers have become for the land. They are extraordinary, almost mythical creatures, with their enormous wingspan, great longevity and remarkable powers of ocean navigation and travel, almost transcending the very concept of what it means to be a bird. I remember so well when I was in the Royal Navy standing on the deck of a fast-moving warship in one of the Southern oceans, watching an albatross maintaining perfect position alongside for hour after hour, and apparently day after day. It is a sight I will never forget, and I find it unthinkable that we could extinguish them for ever, never to be resurrected. But unless action is taken, that is exactly what will happen. The plight of the albatross should remind us of the ultimate fragility of all the migratory species that mark the great cycle of the seasons and the mysterious, inner unseen urge that compels such creatures to follow, with unerring accuracy, the timeless patterns of movement around this globe. But they are now dependent upon the whim of man -- either we can choose to do something to save them, or stand by and let them disappear. If we allow this to happen then I, for one, think we would sacrifice any claim whatsoever to call ourselves civilized beings.

We will have violated something profoundly sacred in the inner workings of Nature, and future generations will never forgive us. Introduction Carl Safina, adapted from Eye of the Albatross 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. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge''s 1798 epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (part of which is quoted above), the sailor who kills an albatross is compelled to wear around his neck the evidence of his crime against nature. Even two centuries ago, the bird symbolised beneficent companionship, harmed only at our peril. Coleridge, who never saw an albatross, sensed that here was a seabird with power enough to convey a universal cautionary tale. We sense it still. Coleridge was not the only person who felt the symbolic power of albatrosses. Even scientists repeatedly freighted the birds with metaphor and meaning, draping them with everything from heroic virtue to fear and foreboding.

Thus the genus name scientifically denoting most albatrosses is the Latin Diomedea . Diomedes was one of Homer''s war heroes. During one campaign he so offended the goddess of wisdom, Athene, that in retribution she beset his fleet with a terrifying storm. When, rather than acting contrite, some of his crew further taunted the goddess, she transformed them into large white birds, ''gentle and virtuous''. The genus of dark-plumaged sooty albatrosses, Phoebetria , derives from the Latin, phoebetron , an object of terror, and the Greek phoibetria , a prophetess or soothsayer. Exulans , the wandering albatross''s specific name, means ''out of one''s country'', thus to live in exile. That may be how the mariners on multi-year voyages who saw them felt. But the albatrosses themselves were always quite at home.

In the metaphors we make of the creatures of the heavens and the deep, we often project our imagery, imbuing them with our own reflection. But the world is more than a colouring book of shapes for us to fill in. When we perceive metaphor in reality we enhance our understanding of ourselves. But when we install meanings instead of seeing reality, we miss all the true texture and inherent value, like a child doodling over a great masterpiece. Loading up an albatross with our own symbols is a bit unfair -- unfair to the animal, who suffers the bias of impressions we''ve created, and unfair to us; we miss the expansive opportunity of knowing other creatures. Why force albatrosses to wear humans around their necks? Sometimes an albatross is simply a bird. When we see that, worlds open. These immense creatures we call ''albatross'' are the greatest long-distance wanderers on earth.

Big birds in big oceans, albatrosses lead big, sprawling lives across space and time, travelling to the limits of seemingly limitless seas. They accomplish these distances by wielding the impressive -- wondrous, really -- body architecture of creatures built to glide indefinitely. An albatross is a great symphony of flesh, perception, bone and feathers, composed of long movements and set to ever-changing rhythms of light, wind, water. The musicality of an albatross in air derives not just from the bird itself but from the contrapuntal suite of action and inaction from which it composes flight. The creature drifts in the atmosphere at high speed, but itself remains immobile -- an immense bird holding stock-still yet shooting through the wind. Just as individual notes become music by relationship to other notes, the bird''s stillness becomes movement by context. Following your travelling ship with ease, watching you, circling stern to prow and back at will, it flies with scarcely a flinch, skimming wave upon wave, mile after mile after mile. Watching it, you invariably wonder, ''How can it do that?'' Exerting no propelling power of its own over long distances, it is driven by the tension between the two greatest forces on our planet: gravity and the solar-powered wind.

The huge bird''s placid mastery of gales never fails to impress mariners distressed by heavy weather. Charles Darwin, in a tempest near Cape Horn while aboard the Beagle in 1833, wrote, ''Whilst we were heavily laboring, it was curious to see how the Albatross . glided right up the wind.'' Not far from there a few years ago, in a storm so great it stopped our 270-foot ship for a day, I too watched wandering albatrosses somehow gliding directly into 70-knot winds in hurricane conditions, circling our paralysed ship with surreal serenity, seeming oblivious to the shrieking, spume-filled gusts. While mariners marvelled at the sheer size and stamina of albatrosses for centuries, the birds'' oceanic travels were impossible to cipher. Where did they go? Sailors speculated, and some came close. Scientists guessed wrong. No one could have fully imagined, because albatrosses exert almost unimaginable lives.

In the last few years albatrosses have been tracked by earth-orbiting satellites, and their true travels outdistance all previous conjecture. During their whole lifespan they expend 95 per cent of their existence at sea -- flying most of that time. Before maturing, albatrosses remain at sea for years, never alighting upon a solid surface, perhaps not glimpsing land, all the while. Theirs is a fluid world of wind and wild waters, everything in perpetual motion. When they do breed, albatrosses haunt only the most removed islands, hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles from any continent. And even at the most isolated island groups, albatrosses often choose to nest on the tiniest offshore islets, as though they can barely tolerate land at all. But even living so far from humanity, albatrosses increasingly share a human-dominated destiny. Because they range so far and live so long, albatrosses contend with almost every effect that people exert upon the sea.

From the elemental world of wind and water, the albatross''s realm has come to encompass every complexity from fishing boats to chemical alterations to human-caused climate changes. Everything people are doing to oceans, albatrosses feel. As we''ve entered a new human-dominated era in our planet''s history -- from the Holocene into the Anthropocene -- albatrosses take on a new metaphorical role: they are one measure of our success; their health is our health, their failure is our failure. No study of nature can now avoid confronting the great changes humans have wrought. Albatrosses ne.