An Albatross

No, not the band.

The bird.

You know, the bird that scientists are using to get data on the weather and water conditions for the North Pacific Ocean?

Yes, it is true. Scientists have decided, that out of all the birds around the Pacific ocean, the albatross is the best choice. Why, you might ask? They are great in the air, using wind gusts and the like to fling their bodies across wind currents with ease. The albatross makes flying look like a piece of cake. The albatross is also excellent in the water, feet being webbed like that of a duck, and are pretty solid on land as well. That said, they usually live and nest around water, preferring to call islands home as they hunt the pelagic for food. The perfect specimen to do an oceanographer's dirty work for him, collect the dirty facts that satellites cannot achieve or collect.

The number of species of Albatross is of constant debate. The common number you hear for number of species is 21, but it ranges from 13 to 24. Who knows. Scientists disagreeing, now that's a new one. They are also thought(Sibley-Ahlquist) to have descended second in line from a Cretaceous creature known as a Tytthostonyx.

The funny thing is, while the albatross is seemingly a golden candidate to act as vessel for this research, the cold hard fact is that almost all of the species of this particular bird are currently threatened with extinction. Now, I ask you, when a scientist says "Well, if we use the actual bird in question," this same oceanographer collecting data on the Pacific, "that is endangered, we can better determine how to stop the extinction of the species by monitoring its contact with fishing boats and other human threats."

Excuse me, isn't that kind of a cop-out? Is that like saying, "hey, let's do genetic research on the last 2 hippos on earth so that we can better determine why their life expectancy is so short and they're not reproducing?"

Seems to defeat the purpose, does it not? Interfering with these birds is probably the last thing they need in order to survive. Less commercial fishing? Yes. Duh. The entire ocean needs that. Over-fishing the Gulf has caused a population overflow of jellyfish, thus killing a ton of the fish population there(look it up). We definitely do not need John Q Researcher to tell us commercial fishing of our oceans is killing species.

We might be human, but we aren't complete idiots.

As for the band, rock on. An Albatross's "We are the lazer viking" was a great one.