A Poor Man’s Pelagic

Today I joined my friends Bob and Jeanine for a ‘Poor man’s pelagic’. Instead of signing up for a previously scheduled pelagic tour, complete with guides and spotters and chum and a boat dedicated to chasing birds at sea, and hoping that the weather and seas are favorable, we simply picked a day with great weather and a calm ocean and hopped aboard a local fishing boat that was scheduled to go as far as 20 miles away from land. We were hoping to see Wilson’s Storm-petrels and a variety of shearwaters, some of which were being spotted even from shore by landlubbers with scopes and skilled eyes. I am not that good at identifying sea birds at a distance, so we were taking the easy route by going out to get closer to them.

It was a great trip. The fishermen remained on the bottom level while we were up alone in the penthouse suite. On the trip out we were looking at every bird, hoping that it would turn into something ‘good’, but ultimately they were the familiar Laughing and Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls. Eventually we learned to look for something that was not gull-like, and Jeanine spotted our first tiny Wilson’s Storm-petrel, looking like a swallow dancing above the water’s surface. During the course of the trip we were able to spot at least 15 of them, almost always as singletons. When we were only six miles or so from shore the captain dropped anchor and gave the fishermen the signal to drop their lines. It was a nice diversion for me to watch them haul in fish (mostly Sea Bass and an occasional fluke) at a fairly high rate when I wasn’t scanning the horizon for birds. Eventually the captain decided to move on to another site where they were expecting to catch some tasty Ling, and as we approached the 10 mile area, Bob spotted a pair of large brown birds on the water being flushed by our boat. Our first Shearwaters of the day! With their yellow bills the identification was clear that these were Cory’s Shearwaters. This was a bit unexpected for me because both Sooty and Great Shearwaters were being spotted by others from land, so I thought that they would be our most likely sightings. I guess nobody told the Cory’s. We eventually went up to 16 miles from shore, and spotted a total of at least a dozen shearwaters, although we could only identify half of them with any confidence. One turned out to be a Great Shearwater, but unfortunately my camera shifted to a 1/30 sec shutter speed at that point, so the documentation shot was less-than perfect. (in other words…trash) We never did find a clear Sooty, so perhaps a return trip is in our future.

If you are in the mood for seeing some pelagic species and there are not any scheduled trips, consider using the poor man’s option. Contact the captain of a local fishing boat, ask how far they plan to go out and if they accept non-fishing passengers. He might even be able to tell you if they have been seeing any interesting birds. Since we weren’t taking up fishing space on the railing, we got a reduced rate as non-fishing passengers. The advantages of this approach are that you can pick a day with great conditions and that the cost is minimal. On the negative side, there is no expertise on board to help with identifying the birds, and they don’t chum to bring the birds in or chase them across the water. I’ll take that trade-off once in a while.