I finally got to go out on the pelagic trip today that I have had planned for about a month and a half. For those of you who don't know what Iam talking about, here is the basic premise. A bunch of birders, in our case I think 18, crowd onto a fishing charter boat and head out into the open ocean, again in our case about 20 nautical miles. On the way out and the way back, someone stands at the back and ladels ground up meat into the water as chum in the hopes that birds begin to follow the boat and allow the birders a chance to identify them. Seabirds are among the most difficult to identify and often very little is known about the birds. Compound that with high seas, seasickness, and attempting to look at a flying bird through binoculars or a camera while you are bouncing up and down on the sea and you get quite a challenging experience. Why would anyone do this? It is a chance to see some interesting birds and the only way to see a lot of open ocean, or pelagic, species that only return to land to breed and typically that is on some remote rocky island.
I had the fortunate opportunity to join up with a trip run by the Southern Oceans Seabird Study Organization (SOSSA). This group has monthly trips out of Wollongong, just south of Sydney. On each trip they capture many albatrosses in order to take measurements and blood and band the bird. By doing this, they can learn a lot about the physiology of the birds as well as their movements and behavior. We were fortunate to have a large number of Wandering Albatrosses around the boat, many of which they captured and documented before releasing them.
I just want to take a second to mention that albatross taxonomy is one of the most techincal and debated subjects in the birding community. I don't pretend to understand all the nuances but basically there are several groups of species (or subspecies depending on who you reference) that all fall into a larger group, or single species. People tend to refer to the larger groups as types. For example, the Wandering-type Albatrosses include Snowy, Antipodean, Amsterdam, Gibson's Albatrosses among others. For my purposes here, I will just refer to the larger group such as Wandering Albatross or Shy Albatross rather than the specifics as it is often necessary to have the bird in the hand to determine between the species (or subspecies).
Anyway, back to the day. We had a glorious day with little wind and low seas. I recorded 16 species of birds, 2 species of mammals, and photographed 11 of the birds and both the mammls. It was a great day and I was really pleased with the experience. Since I took a ton of pictures, I plan to write up an essay on the experience and post it as my first entry in my Travel Log. I hope to have it finished by the end of the week but no promises. Keep checking back to see when it is up.
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