When they forage, they follow a straight path to a single site off the coast of Peru, about 1,000 km (620 mi) to the east.

Finally, they produce a stomach oil made up of wax esters and triglycerides that is stored in the proventriculus.

[5] They also have a salt gland that is situated above the nasal passage and helps desalinate their bodies, due to the high amount of ocean water that they imbibe.

[9][10] During non-breeding season they will shift to the east and southeast to the continental shelf region off the coast of Peru and Ecuador.

[9] The primary food sources of the waved albatross are fish, squid, and crustaceans, as well as smaller birds.

Waved albatrosses do have difficulty in landing because of their high stalling speed, and in taking off because of their weight and wing span.

The population of waved albatrosses on the Galápagos is protected by national park personnel, and the island is also categorized as a World Heritage Site.

Longline fishing in particular seems to be having a severe impact on the species, the conservation status of which was upgraded from near threatened to vulnerable by the IUCN in 2000.

Despite there still being some 34,700 adult birds in 2001, their numbers have apparently started to decrease at an unknown rate more recently, probably due to longline fishing which also upsets the sex ratio (males being killed more frequently).

As the current situation makes the population highly vulnerable to a catastrophic collapse to extinction, it was uplisted to critically endangered status in the 2007 IUCN Red List.