Gene Kridier to Roger Clapp 
Tape 
P-5 
In your paragraph explaining about what takes place on Kure and the like, I have added 
if Necker is comparable to its nearest neighbor Nihoa, chick mortality would be much 
lower than at Kure. Observations in September show that albatross remains are far 
less noticeable or evident than on the flatter islands such as Laysan or Southeast 
Island at Pearl and Hermes Reef. We just don’t see that many dead chicks there on 
Nihoa or Necker at that time of the year. Why, I don't know, I’m just inclined to 
think that mortality for some reason or the other is lower than on the flatter islands. 
Next page - on annual cycle. Change Leeward Islands to northwestern Hawaiian 
Islands. This change is going to be taking place continually throughout the text, 
Roger, if we are to be consistent with this latest name change. 
Then on the paragraph on ecology on the second page of the species account. 
The last sentence, I’ve added March 1969 observations have confirmed this after 
the sentence about none listed on Northwest Cape. I don’t recall seeing any nesting 
Black-footed Albatross on the Northwest Cape. The few albatross chicks you see there 
are almost invariably the Laysan. Then in 1969 on the table, I’ve added the 1969 March 
data for Laysan Albatross. Now here in March of 1969 ? we actually headcounted 510 
chicks and may have missed but a few but this probably would be a small handful. 
So, we consider 510 chicks and double this for your breeding pair, at this time now, 
22 March, you would then have a little better than 1,000 breeding pair, breeding birds, 
added to this year your 510 chicks, so you come up with a minimum population of 1550. 
Now here again, just how many of the adults were nonbreeders we didn’t count adults 
this trip because of the shortage of time and we felt that the counting of chicks was 
much more important especially a year to year to year or every so many years because 
certainly the number of nonbreeding birds is going to fluctuate considerably from 
year to year and they don’t tell us too much. So the 1550 would then be an absolute 
minimum figure and undoubtedly the populations must run well over several thousand. 
Now the 510 chicks headcounted is very close to the 550.young counted in 1965 and 
if we’re going to have comparable data with the number of breeding pairs'we calculated 
1,100 in March 1965 and were we to calculate breeding pair here in 1969 we would then 
come up with 1,020, which is very close. Now when we checked this data with that of 
