Albatrosses, especially large ones like this Wandering Albatross prefer rough seas and a lot of wind. Actually they don’t really care about the seas, but they do need the wind. Albatrosses are quite lazy birds, they like to cover large distances in search of food, but they don’t want to spent too much energy in doing so. So they prefer to soar, making use of the higher wind speeds to create lift and not flap their wings too much. So conditions like this are perfect for albatrosses and thus for watching albatrosses. For me this is also the reason I don’t want the Drake Passage to be too calm. In that case you’ll spent two days at sea just looking at an empty sea. A bit more wind (oke, not too much…) and the sea comes much more alive.