The current evidence suggests that a combination of factors may have been responsible. Short-tailed albatross, which are now confined to the North Pacific, bred as recently as are 400,000 years ago in Bermuda. We know they used to occur there from fossil records. Quite why they don’t occur in the North Atlantic is still a subject of debate amongst scientists. They are found in the North and South Pacific, and in the South Atlantic, but not the North Atlantic. Once they are fledged, they remain at sea without ever touching land again for the next five or six years. Individual birds will circumnavigate the earth, travelling as much as 500 miles in a day and often flying at a steady 50 miles an hour. They belong to the family Diomedeidae, and like their relatives the petrels and shearwaters, they have distinctive tube-shaped nasal passages, which scientists believe help them find food at sea through a keen sense of smell. Huge seabirds that appear to soar effortlessly at sea, hardly moving so much as a wingtip.
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