New South Wales Albatross Study Group

The New South Wales Albatross Study Group (NSWASG) was an amateur ornithological fieldwork group that banded albatrosses and other seabirds off the coast of eastern New South Wales, Australia. Primarily targeting winter feeding aggregations of wandering albatrosses near Sydney, it developed its own catching methods and initiated what has become the longest-running continuous albatross research study in the world.

The origins of the NSWASG lie in the pioneer albatross banding activities started by Doug Gibson and Allan Sefton in 1956 at Bellambi in the Illawarra region, and by Bill Lane and Harry Battam in 1958 at Malabar, some 56 km further north in south-eastern Sydney. This followed the realisation that large concentrations of great albatrosses appeared in winter off the New South Wales coast not far from Sydney, and raised the possibility among local amateur ornithologists of catching useful numbers at sea for banding. Black-browed albatrosses also occurred in similar numbers, but wandering albatrosses were considered easier to catch because of their “more phlegmatic disposition”, so the banding programs focussed on the latter. At the time there were thought to be only two great albatross species – the wandering and royal albatrosses, with the royal (now split into northern royal and southern royal albatrosses) not known to occur along the coast of eastern Australia. The group, incorporating both banding programs, was formed in 1958 to operate as part of the Australian Bird Banding Scheme. Its objective was “to accumulate… as much information as possible concerning Diomedea exulans when at sea”.

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