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An albatross which left Japan's Mukojima Island is pictured off the coast of California on Oct. 12 in this photograph taken by Alvaro Jaramillo, a senior researcher with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory.

Several albatrosses bred by humans, which left a Japanese island about five months ago, have been spotted off the coast of San Francisco, California, after traveling some 26,000 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean, the Ministry of the Environment has announced.

It is the first time that researchers have confirmed that albatrosses bred by humans traveled such a long distance.

The Environment Ministry and the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology have been working on a project to protect the endangered seabirds from extinction by relocating their breeding grounds from the active volcanic island of Torishima in the Izu Islands.

In February this year, 15 albatross chicks were moved to Mukojima Island, part of the Ogasawara Islands some 350 kilometers away from their original nesting site. After a few months of hand-feeding, all of them successfully left the nest by May 25.

Researchers had attached satellite transmitters to seven of them to follow their migration routes.

In early October, signals from one female albatross indicated that it had reached the coast of San Francisco. The bird was tracked to the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula in early July. From there, it crossed over the Pacific Ocean toward the Gulf of Alaska via the Aleutian Islands, and then flew along the western coast of Canada down to California, researchers said.

Of the seven banded birds, two were located in the Bering Sea, while one was confirmed in the Gulf of Alaska. However, the remaining three have not been spotted yet.

The albatrosses that nest on Torishima Island and the Senkaku Islands, migrate to the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands or the coast of Alaska in summer, before coming back to their breeding colony after a few years. Before 1900, they were found in the bay of San Francisco; however, the birds have become endangered today due to over hunting.