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"Skuas winter around South America as do giant petrels and we think these birds are the vector that bought the disease into South Georgia," said Dr Ratcliffe.

In one critically endangered petrel species that nests in burrows - the MacGillivray's prion - not a single chick survived.

With no terrestrial predators to steal their eggs, these islands are breeding sanctuaries for ground- and cliff-nesting seabirds like the western gull, Scripps’s murrelet and the ashy storm petrel.

But shearwaters, as well as petrels and albatrosses, are part of a class known as tube-nosed seabirds, with tubular nostrils and an excellent senses of smell.

Red soil and lava rocks dominate the high-altitude landscape, which is also home to endangered and threatened species like the nene, the Hawaiian goose, and the Hawaiian petrel, an endangered seabird.