University of Pretoria (UP) researchers have become the first to document a disturbing new threat to the endangered grey-headed albatross: wind-driven, land-based deaths. The team documented the phenomenon on remote Marion Island during the sub-Antarctic summer. The study, published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series (MEPS), sheds light on the growing risks that extreme weather pose to vulnerable wildlife.
As home to the second-largest breeding population of these seabirds, the island is important to the long-term survival of grey-headed albatrosses, of which only 250 000 are left worldwide.
While albatrosses are built for speed and soaring on ocean winds, they’re not as agile when flying over land in extremely windy conditions. This can cause some to crash-land, with fatal consequences, says Dr Janine Schoombie, an aeronautical engineer who holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UP. She investigated the precise aerodynamics behind the unparalleled efficiency in flight of the grey-headed albatross.
“Grey-headed albatrosses have wingspans of 2,2 metres, and specialise in gliding, not flapping,” Dr Schoombie explains. “Their long, narrow wing shape is adapted for low-cost dynamic soaring flight, similar to that of glider aircraft. However, the same adaptations that make them super gliders also make their wings less manoeuvrable. Flying over land becomes riskier, particularly when they take off or land.”
On Marion Island, two densely packed nesting sites are situated along cliffs some 50 to 200m above ground. In 2017, South African researchers and MEPS co-authors Chris Jones and Michelle Risi observed the carcasses of many grey-headed albatrosses in the inhospitable Santa Rosa Valley, close to one of these colonies. The broken bones of these birds provided stark evidence that they had fatally crash-landed.
Detailed carcass surveys followed from October 2017 to June 2021. This included surveys by Dr Schoombie and her husband, zoologist and UP alumnus Dr Stefan Schoombie, when they were members of the 2019 annual South African research team to Marion Island.
“We were shocked to find so many carcasses,” Dr Schoombie recalls. “Some were very old, which showed that fatal crashes may have been part of the birds’ life on the island for many years.”
Four years’ worth of surveys found that at least 41 adults and 40 fledglings on average died every year after crashing into the valley.
“For this particular colony, it’s worth about 2% of its annual production of fledglings, 0.5% of its estimated annual breeding adult population and an estimated 11% of annual deaths among adults,” Dr Schoombie says. “This might seem like a low number, but remember that grey-headed albatrosses can live up to 40 years, and that these seabirds usually enjoy a very high survival rate. Even a small increase in annual adult deaths could influence their population growth.”
Other researchers recently noted an increase in strong northerly winds experienced on Marion Island. They attributed it to a poleward shift in western winds (the so-called Southern Ocean Westerlies) over the Southern Ocean.
“If this trend continues, it’s likely that grey-headed albatrosses breeding on the ridge will more regularly have to depart their nests in unfavourable conditions,” Dr Schoombie says. “Continued surveys are required to monitor the effect that changes in wind conditions and the likelihood of more crashes could have on bird numbers over the long term.”
Months of observing the albatrosses in flight have shown that at some point, most breeding adults fly over the “crash hotspot” situated below the centre of the particular colony. Wind conditions likely cause the crash-landings. Most occur when adults leave the colony for the sea to forage to feed their chick and when they fly low for about 2km over a particularly rugged valley in strong variable westerly or north-westerly winds and downdrafts. Dr Schoombie found that wind variability, together with the presence of downdrafts, may cause birds flying low over the valley to experience a sudden loss of lift, thus losing altitude and crash-landing.
“Departing albatrosses tend to lose altitude immediately after take-off, in contrast to returning birds typically arriving at higher altitudes,” she explains. “If uninjured after crash-landing, the heavy birds cannot take off again from the sheltered valley because there is not enough wind to help lift them off.”
Why do the birds not wait for more favourable conditions before flying off the island?
“Adults returning from the sea to relieve partners from incubation or brooding duties, or to feed larger chicks, have the option to wait offshore until conditions for landing at the colony fall within acceptable limits,” Dr Schoombie says. “However, once relieved of guarding their chick, the adult that remained on land may be too hungry to wait any longer before flying off.”
“As an aeronautical engineering student, I assumed I’d find detailed aerodynamic information in literature, or that there would at least be a detailed geometry of the most famous of all albatrosses, the wandering albatross,” Dr Schoombie says. “When I could not find enough detail to answer my questions, I challenged myself to fill this knowledge gap.”
As part of ongoing investigations into albatross crash-landings, she uses UP’s wind tunnel facility to conduct experiments on the aerodynamic forces acting on the birds’ wings during flight, using three grey-headed albatross wings donated by the Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology based at the University of Cape Town. The digital design of the wing and body of a grey-headed albatross was published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.
“It’s much easier to determine the aerodynamics of an aeroplane’s rigid wing than that of birds,” Dr Schoombie says. “Aspects like its build and feathers, along with the way that wings bend at different wind speeds, all influence the aerodynamic loads.”
As wind patterns shift, this research highlights the need for continued monitoring and targeted conservation efforts.
Click the gallery in the sidebar to view some pictures from the field.
Click on the infographic to learn more about albatrosses.
Read more about how climate change is shifting wind patterns on Page 10 of RE.SEARCH 4: Transdisciplinary.
Read more about how UP researchers are finding ways to make air travel cheaper, faster and cleaner by studying the flight of the albatross for inspiration on Page 6 of RE.SEARCH 2: Innovation.
Dr Janine Schoombie
July 28, 2025
Janine Schoombie is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pretoria (UP), in the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. Dr Schoombie obtained her undergraduate and honours degrees in Mechanical Engineering at UP. She completed an MSc at the University of the Witwatersrand and completed her PhD at UP in November 2024.
Schoombie worked at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research from 2016 to 2019. Between 2018 and 2022, she was a co-investigator and technical lead on a project with Professor Peter le Roux of UP’s Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, investigating the impact of wind on the terrestrial ecology of Marion Island. Schoombie was a co-supervisor for an MEng student working on the wind project; Prof Ken Craig of UP’s Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering was the student’s supervisor.
Between March 2019 and May 2020, as part of the Marion Island Wind Project, the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences employed Schoombie as a field researcher on Marion Island. “My job was to maintain field equipment and collect ecological data for several postgraduate projects as well as for my own PhD,” she says.
Schoombie says she really enjoyed working with Prof Le Roux and learnt a lot from him about managing a research group, from funding applications and budgets to logistics and various other non-academic duties that an undergraduate student is not usually exposed to.
The project on Marion Island is an example of cross-faulty research. Its official title is ‘Wind as an underexplored component of climate change’. Schoombie elaborates on the research.
“Marion Island is in the sub-Antarctic region, in the so-called ‘Roaring Forties’, and is considered a wind-moulded ecosystem. However, when studying the effects of climate change, one finds that wind is still understudied. The aim of the project was to look at the effect of wind on the terrestrial ecology on a ‘within-island’ scale. Wind data at this scale was not available, so we deployed 17 wind sensors across the island, and an MEng student conducted a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study, simulating wind flowing over the island at the scale of metres. The CFD data was linked to several other postgraduate projects, mostly looking at vegetation, but also looking to find a correlation with the breeding sites of wandering albatrosses, if any, and my own PhD.”
Parts of the project are still ongoing in partnership with collaborators at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town.
Schoombie’s doctoral research explored the aerodynamic limitations of grey-headed albatrosses and how fatal crash-landings can be caused by wind. Although it is a transdisciplinary PhD, the methods used were based mainly on engineering principles.
As for why she chose to conduct research at UP, Schoombie says that Prof Lelanie Smith of the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering was her best option as a supervisor for her PhD as she really understood what Schoombie wanted to do and supported her vision. Prof Smith conducts research in the fields of aerospace engineering, aeronautical engineering and computational physics. Prof Craig, Schoombie’s co-supervisor, is an expert in the fields of wind engineering and numerical modelling, which forms a large part of her research.
Schoombie’s research was prompted by her observations of adult grey-headed albatrosses crash-landing in a valley below an inland cliff, which is a large breeding site on Marion Island. Her research, specifically her PhD work, contributes to our understanding of the impact of wind as a factor of climate change on endangered grey-headed albatrosses. As a long-lived species, any new source of mortality could have an impact on population growth.
“My goal is to look at the wind around this site and the birds’ aerodynamic capabilities to determine which prevailing wind conditions are the cause of these fatal crash-landings, and to determine whether this would become a problem with climate change, since we know the wind direction is shifting northward and wind strength is increasing,” she explains.
The three main components of this project were to quantify and spatially map the crash sites; get a geometry of a grey-headed albatross in flight; and conduct CFD simulations on the albatross geometry to determine the aerodynamic forces acting on them under different wind conditions.
A research highlight for Schoombie has been the positive feedback she’s received from ecology and engineering communities.
“The first article published that was drawn from my PhD work was in a well-regarded journal, Marine Ecology Progress Series,” she says. “I had very positive feedback from some prominent people in the polar science community. I also presented my research at the Aeronautical Society of South Africa Conference in 2023 and was pleasantly surprised by how interested the other engineers were, despite my project answering a biological question rather than solving a problem in aviation!”. A second article, detailing the creation of a digital model of a gliding grey-headed albatross, was published in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.
Schoombie says going to Marion Island for the first time in 2015 as a field assistant was a life-changing experience.
“I developed an understanding of scientific work in other fields and Marion Island is such a special place. I did a lot of thinking in the field. My PhD brought together my great love of aerodynamics and Marion Island.”
Schoombie has two academic role models, Prof Lelanie Smith and Prof Emily Shepard of Swansea University in Wales.
“Prof Smith works very hard and has accomplished so much even though she’s not that much older than me!” Schoombie says. “Her passion for engineering education is infectious and I hope to inspire people in the same way that she does.”
Prof Shepard is an expert in movement ecology, having made great strides in the use of engineering tools such as computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnels to study the movement, distribution and energetics of birds. Schoombie describes her as a great mentor.
Schoombie hopes to continue contributing to our understanding of the natural world and how best to preserve it. Her research matters, she says, because it demonstrates how engineering and ecology can complement each other.
Her advice to school learners and undergraduates interested in her field is the following: “Regardless of whether you’re interested in engineering or conservation, don’t neglect maths, and learn to code as soon as possible. I know quite a few researchers who studied biology because they didn’t want to do maths any longer, yet most of their work involves writing code to run mathematical models to explain their data.”
Schoombie is an avid naturalist, and spends a lot of her free time outdoors, hiking and uploading observations of flowers to iNaturalist.
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