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title: "A colour-banded Northern Royal gets spotted in Chilean waters"
---

# A colour-banded Northern Royal gets spotted in Chilean waters

*![D23 Dan Mosher](https://www.acap.aq/images/D23_Dan_Mosher.jpg)D23 (band readable on expanding) in Chilean waters, photograph by Dan Mosher*

 Dan Mosher has reported on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/86878741545/user/100052571420950) of photographing an [Endangered](https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/northern-royal-albatross-diomedea-sanfordi) Northern Royal Albatross *Diomedea sanfordi* off the coast of Chile.  The bird carried a black plastic band on its left leg engraved with D23.

 He writes “I recently returned from a cruise [aboard the] *Oosterdam* from San Antonio, Chile to the Antarctica Peninsula to Buenos Aires and back again.  I’m a deck-watcher and enjoy seeing and photographing the pelagic seabirds we encounter along the way.  On the return trip from Puerto Montt Chile going [north] toward San Antonio, we came across a tagged royal albatross that was quite close to the ship.  The tag clearly reads D23”.  He adds in a comment that the date was 21 February 2026.

 Following enquiries posted to his page, the bird was confirmed to be a Northern Royal Albatross from the Taiaroa Head/Pukekura mainland colony near Dunedin in New Zealand, and that it is a male, hatched in 2023, one of 33 chicks to fledge from the colony that [2022/23] season.

 Let’s hope it will return to the colony and eventually commence breeding.

 *John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses* *and Petrels, 12 March 2026*