Hello, everyone! Ilupa and I have returned from sea to South Georgia Island and selected our nest site. As you see it is a most picturesque spot, but really every point on our island is stunningly beautiful. We albatrosses are one of the most slowly reproducing species on Earth; we spend the first 7-10 years of our lives entirely at sea before returning to the islands where we were born to choose the mate we will stay with for life. It takes a year of intensive effort to raise a single chick. If we are successful, our chick will not fledge until December of next year. Many pinnipeds and penguins also come ashore here to South Georgia to breed.

Ilupa and I are full of excitement and hope, but also an indescribable sadness, because we look around and see so many unoccupied nest sites. We know that every year fewer and fewer of us return to nest, because so many albatrosses are killed by human fishing boats. Only one third of the albatross chicks born on this island will survive to adulthood. This is the deep grief that we all carry and try not to speak of.