Hi All, below is an account of last Saturday's Southport pelagic. Cheers
- Paul W.
Location: Southport, Queensland.
Date: 16/11/2013
Vessel: 37 ft Steber monohull MV Grinner
Crew: Darren Shringles (skipper)
Pax: Paul Walbridge (leader & organizer), Jon Norling, Joe Gilmour,
Dave Flumm, Nicolas Rakatopare, Dave Stewart, Andrew Sutherland, Linda
McCurdy, Judith Hoyle, Kathy Wilk, Deborah Metters, Stuart Pickering,
Chris Wiley, Dick Andersson.
Weather conditions:
A weak ridge extended along the tropical Queensland coast combined with
a surface trough over the south eastern interior, bringing unsettled
conditions to the south east coastline. Light S-SE winds early turning
to strengthening E-NE winds by late morning, to 15-20 not northerly by
mid afternoon. Heavy cloud, with storm activity on leaving the coast but
easing when heading out wide until late morning when a suspected rain
squall turned into a full blown electrical storm. Cloud cover, moderate
to heavy with visibility good to poor. Max. air temp. 27* C, barometer
1010 hPa.
Sea conditions:
Calm seas on .5 metre swell early on, rising to 1 metre seas, on a 1.8
metre swell with the deteriorating conditions. Sea surface temps. 23.7*
C at the seaway rising to 27* C at the shelf-break and a maximum of 27.8*
C at the widest drift point, quite warm for November. EAC running at 2.5
knots.
Summary:
Left the Southport Seaway at 0600 hrs and headed ENE to the undersea
structure known as Jim*s Mountain, a distance of 28 nautical miles.
Crossed the shelf-break at 0800 hrs and arrived at the final drift point
at 0850 hrs. Drifted SSW until severe weather forced us to head back
inshore at 1130 hrs, arriving back at the seaway at 1400 hrs. Duration
of trip 8 hours.
On leaving the seaway, it was no surprise to see Short-tailed
Shearwaters still foraging around but fewer moribund birds noted, which
was good to see. Shortly after at 0605 hrs the first trawler was
encountered, with at least 40 Short-tailed and 5 Wedge-tailed
Shearwaters present along with about 20 Crested Terns. A few minutes
later at 0620 hrs a second trawler was encountered and this produced a
few more Crested Terns, the seasons* first Arctic Jaegers and 3 Great
Cormorants. Crossing the shelf it was heartening to see many south
moving, undulating skeins of Short-tailed Shearwaters in normal
migration mode, a welcome change to the recent inshore mayhem. At 0715
hrs the first Pomarine Jaeger of the Spring was sighted moving south,
with another single bird a few minutes later. At the 50 fathom mark the
customary shark liver filled berley bag was lowered and almost
immediately several Wedge-tailed Shearwaters began to follow the
vessel.
Arrived at the drift point at 0850 hrs with a couple of Wedge-tailed, a
single Short-tailed Shearwater and a single Tahiti Petrel (most likely
recently fledged) cruising in almost immediately. Over the next hour and
a half these three species dominated and unlike last month, this time
Wedge-tailed Shearwater numbers prevailed. The first Wilson*s
Storm-Petrel turned up in the slick at 0935 hrs and it wasn*t until
1015 hrs that the first Flesh-footed Shearwater turned up. All the birds
were ravenous, and the berley had little time floating, being snapped up
right at the rear of the vessel. The Tahiti Petrels in particular were
vocally aggressive and sat on the water less than 1 metre from the boat;
even the Flesh-footeds weren*t game to take those brutish beaks on. I
was shooting Tahiti Petrels at 80-100 mm on the 70-300 *L* lens.
Tahiti Petrel has an enormous gape and I can envisage one easily
accounting for a Wilson*s Storm-Petrel for example.
By now the Wedge-tailed Shearwater numbers had built up to 120+ and
being continuously replenished as were numbers of Tahiti Petrel and
Flesh-footed Shearwater. Small parties of up to 4 Sooty Terns approached
the vessel and as often happen a pair of adults with a single juvenile
bird would approach quite closely, calling loudly. At 1030 hrs the sole
Black-bellied Storm-Petrel appeared but only briefly, before
disappearing down the slick. Shortly afterward a fresh plumaged
intermediate Kermadec Petrel charged in with resplendent primary
flashes, landing briefly on the water amongst the other birds, before
making several passes around the vessel over the next few minutes. About
this time as the electrical storm approached a large, dark, rotund
shearwater arrived amongst the throng of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, a
lone Sooty Shearwater, not often recorded in Spring in these waters.
With the rain now quite heavy and thunder and lightning around us, with
up to 50 knot gusts predicted it was decided to head home at 1130 hrs, a
shame as more birds were still arriving and we normally would have
another hour to go at least. On the way back over the shelf, mostly
Wedge-tailed Shearwaters sighted with the occasional south bound flock
of Short-tailed Shearwaters and another Flesh-footed Shearwater. Also
another Pomarine Jaeger passed to the south just a few miles off the
seaway.
Species:
Wilson*s Storm-Petrel * 11 (3)
Black-bellied Storm-Petrel * 1
Wedge-tailed Shearwater * 287 (120)
Flesh-footed Shearwater * 12 (6)
Sooty Shearwater * 1
Short-tailed Shearwater * 372 (60)
Tahiti Petrel * 18 (4)
Kermadec Petrel * 1
Great Cormorant * 3
Pomarine Jaeger * 4 (1)
Arctic Jaeger * 2
Sooty Tern * 11 (4)
Crested Tern * 36 (20)
Silver Gull * 1
********************************************************************************
This email, including any attachments sent with it, is confidential and for the
sole use of the intended recipient(s). This confidentiality is not waived or
lost, if you receive it and you are not the intended recipient(s), or if it is
transmitted/received in error.
Any unauthorised use, alteration, disclosure, distribution or review of this
email is strictly prohibited. The information contained in this email,
including any attachment sent with it, may be subject to a statutory duty of
confidentiality if it relates to health service matters.
If you are not the intended recipient(s), or if you have received this email in
error, you are asked to immediately notify the sender by telephone collect on
Australia +61 1800 198 175 or by return email. You should also delete this
email, and any copies, from your computer system network and destroy any hard
copies produced.
If not an intended recipient of this email, you must not copy, distribute or
take any action(s) that relies on it; any form of disclosure, modification,
distribution and/or publication of this email is also prohibited.
Although Queensland Health takes all reasonable steps to ensure this email does
not contain malicious software, Queensland Health does not accept
responsibility for the consequences if any person's computer inadvertently
suffers any disruption to services, loss of information, harm or is infected
with a virus, other malicious computer programme or code that may occur as a
consequence of receiving this email.
Unless stated otherwise, this email represents only the views of the sender and
not the views of the Queensland Government.
**********************************************************************************
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
