Pelagic seabirds (albatrosses and petrels) find food by relying on distinct oceanographic features like transition zones, upwelling, and large eddies. These oceanographic features change intensity, distribution, and duration during El Niño/La Niña events resulting in poor breeding performance in seabirds. Climate models predict that these perturbations will last longer, be more variable, and in some cases, cause major shifts in oceanographic regimes. We analyzed our decade-‐long dataset of tracked Laysan and black-‐footed albatrosses (N = 192 individual trips) the breed in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands to investigate the mechanistic role that oceanography plays in affecting the foraging distributions and its subsequent feedback on breeding performance in albatrosses. We compared the total distance traveled, maximum foraging range, trip duration, and the distribution of albatrosses in each year to the distance of the Transition Zone Chlorophyll Front (TZCF) and found that albatrosses traveled farther and for significantly longer durations when the TZCF was greater than 700 km from the colony. The distance of the TZCF to the breeding site was influenced by several climatological features like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Multivariate ENSO Index, Northern Oscillation Index, and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation index. A modeled composite of these features explained a significant amount of variation in the trend of breeding performance in Laysan albatrosses over the last 30 years. No such pattern was observed for black-‐footed albatrosses. Stomach oil collected from 96 breeding albatrosses was analyzed for fatty acid signatures to examine interannual differences (2010-‐2012) in the diets of both species. No interannual differences were observed but a complete characterization of albatross diet was obtained. Overall, the results from this project highlight possible mechanisms (i.e. features of the ocean) that explain variation in breeding performance. From this, connections can be made about long-‐term population viability to possible climate change scenarios.
