Brown Booby: the fish that got away!

Brown Booby: the fish that got away! HIH Princess Takamado shares her reflections and photographs of booby species, taken on a trip to Japan's Ogasawara Islands. “Through the Lens” Fujingahou Magazine, August 2026 Photos and text by HIH Princess Takamado Photo edited by Koichi Fujiwara (NATURE’S PLANET) Edited by Yuki Masuda (Fujingahou) English version prepared by BirdLife International. (This English version is provided for reference only and does not constitute an official version) Around this time last year, many of us – including myself – were making our way to the World Expo 2025, held in Osaka, Japan, caught up in the excitement of the occasion. Looking back on those lively days, I find myself once again astonished by how quickly a year can pass. This time, with summer calling to mind the sea, I would like to introduce one group of seabirds – the boobies. Displaying large numbers of these species from different oceans would have produced little more than a field-guide arrangement, so instead I selected photographs taken in the Ogasawara Islands in May this year and experimented a little with their layout. I hope you enjoy the result. First, a word about the name Brown Booby. In Japanese, this bird is called “Katsuo-dori,” literally meaning “Bonito Bird”; From its name, one might naturally assume that it is a bird that eats bonito, but this is not the case. In fact, a bird could never swallow a fish as large as a this. Instead, Brown Boobies prey on the smaller fish that flee close to the surface while being chased by bonito beneath the sea. In other words, where boobies gather, one can often infer that schools of bonito are pursuing fish beneath the waves. It is said that fishers named Brown Booby “Katsuo-dori” because they served as reliable guides to the whereabouts of schools of fish and productive fishing grounds. The opening photograph shows a rather unusual scene: a Brown Booby failing to secure its catch. After plunging into the sea at speed and successfully grabbing a fish underwater, the bird surfaced only to lose and recapture its prey repeatedly. To imagine what it was like, think of how difficult it would be to keep hold of a slippery fish like a loach. In photographs taken a few moments later, it was seen dipping only its head beneath the surface, searching stubbornly for the meal it had lost. Its determination not to give up was almost tangible. The photographs arranged above depict four types of booby that can be seen in the seas around the Ogasawara Islands. Shown in flight, they are: Brown Booby, Cocos Booby (a subspecies of Brown Booby), brown-morph Red-footed Booby, and white-morph Red-footed Booby. As you can see, all members of the booby family share a remarkably similar body shape, and this is closely tied to their method of hunting. Upon spotting fish from the air, they may plunge almost vertically towards the sea at speeds approaching 100km/h. Once underwater, they continue the pursuit with impressive agility. Their chest, head and neck form a streamlined cone that minimises air resistance during the dive. Just before impact, they fold their wings tightly against the body and extend their legs directly behind them, creating the shape of an arrow and distributing the force of entry evenly through the body. Moreover, beneath the skin of the face and breast lies a layer of air that acts much like an airbag, cushioning the impact of hitting the water while reducing water resistance. In addition, their exceptionally thick and robust skulls serve as helmets that protect the brain. Even so, accidents do occur. Birds sometimes collide with one another as they enter the water, and some have even been known to blind themselves by striking the surface at the wrong angle. The theme of the photographs collated above is competition for food. As the first booby struggles desperately to hold on to a needlefish-like catch, others begin arriving one after another, intent on stealing the prize. The spectacle was so interesting that I continued shooting with the camera in high-speed burst mode and ended up taking nearly a hundred photographs. Although these are still images, they feel almost like the frames of a flipbook or even a video. In fact, I may have been better off filming the scene from the start. Even after repeatedly reviewing every image, I cannot say with complete certainty how the contest ended. Nevertheless, I suspect that the first booby ultimately managed to hold on to its hard-earned meal. Sorting through the many photographs afterwards led me to an interesting realisation. Not only with the Brown Boobies but with seabirds generally, I have surprisingly few photographs that actually show successful captures. Online videos often feature spectacular scenes of flocks of boobies diving simultaneously into vast shoals of sardines, creating the impression that such abundance is commonplace. Yet in the immensity of the open ocean, encounters with such extraordinarily fortunate concentrations of fish may in fact be quite rare. Seabirds glide effortlessly over the boundless sea, yet this voyage reminded me once again how harsh life in the wild truly is, where survival depends solely on one’s own abilities. It was a voyage that left me with a deep and lasting impression.