---
title: "A White‑capped Albatross pair is recorded breeding on Chile’s Diego Ramírez Islands"
---

# A White‑capped Albatross pair is recorded breeding on Chile’s Diego Ramírez Islands

* ![Suazo White capped Polar Biology](https://www.acap.aq/images/stories/acap/Birds/Albatrosses/W/White_capped/Suazo_White-capped_Polar_Biology.jpg)  
The White-capped Albatross*Thalassarche steadi*breeding on Diego Ramírez.  a. Brooding its chick (with a Grey-headed Albatross*T. chrysostoma *chick in the foreground. B. Chick in the early post-guard period.  
 Photographs by Cristóbal Anguita (left) and Carlos Garcés Letelier (right)*

 Cristián Suazo ([Department of Animal Ecology & Systematics](https://www.uni-giessen.de/en/faculties/f08/departments/tsz/index), Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany) and colleagues have published open access in the journal *[Polar Biology](https://link.springer.com/journal/300)* on a pair of breeding White-capped Albatrosses *Thalassarche steadi* that successfully fledged their chick on the Diego Ramírez Islands,  The island group was designated as a Marine Protected Area in 2019.

 The paper’s abstract follows:

 “Albatrosses are renowned for their high philopatry, which has been proposed as a major barrier to their dispersal and hybridization with other albatross species.  Except for shy-type albatross species from New Zealand, examples of colonization of new breeding sites and interbreeding with closely related species are rare.  During the austral summer of 2022, while conducting land-based monitoring of resident Black-browed (*Thalassarche melanophris*) and Grey-headed (*T. chrysostoma*) albatross populations on the Diego Ramírez Islands, Chile (56 S), we documented the first (and southernmost) breeding record of a nesting pair of White-capped Albatross (*T. steadi*), a species endemic to the Auckland Islands, New Zealand (~ 7000 km away).  The species identity was confirmed through molecular analysis.  This discovery underscores the importance of Diego Ramírez and its surrounding waters as a hotspot for global albatross conservation.”

 *![Suazo White capped Polar Biology map](https://www.acap.aq/images/stories/acap/Birds/Albatrosses/W/White_capped/Suazo_White-capped_Polar_Biology_map.jpg)  
The known breeding distribution of the White-capped Albatross in the Southern Ocean - from the publication*

 **Reference:**

 Suazo, C., Anguita, C., Garcés Letelier, C. Martínez, A.·& Quillfeldt, P. 2024.  The white‑capped albatross: a new breeding record for the Diego Ramírez Islands, Chile.  *[Polar Biology doi.org/10.1007/s00300-024-03269-2](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00300-024-03269-2)*.

 *10**June 2024*