• Saturday 28th September 2013 SOSSA PELAGIC TRIP, WOLLONGONG, NSW, AUSTRALIA.

    Here's a list of what we saw on the boat outside the harbour on Saturday. I’ve used the IOC Checklist (v3.4) for taxonomy, nomenclature & order of species and give my usual fairly conservative estimates of numbers. I've attached a .jpg file from Google Earth showing our route.



    Leaving at 07:10 hrs, we travelled out, catching & banding Wedge-tailed Shearwaters and 1 Wandering Albatross on the way, to 34° 25' 31" S; 151° 19' 55" E (WGS 84), 39 km E of Wollongong harbour in 300m+ pelagic waters, where we stopped and drifted 2.38 km SSW, 11:10-11:40 hrs, catching a further Wandering Albatross, then turned back in, stopping at 34° 26' 50" S; 151° 17' 10" E to catch a third Wandering Albatross, before continuing back in to harbour, arriving at 15.40 hrs. Seas fairly flat early on, but becoming bumpier as the wind picked up and became strong in the afternoon. Water temperature 18° inshore and 22° at the shelf edge and in pelagic waters.


    086 Wandering Albatross - 3; all banded
    847 Antipodean Albatross gibsoni - 1
    088 Black-browed Albatross - 6+
    859 Campbell Albatross - 1 juvenile (identified by photo after the trip)
    Black-browed Albatross type 18+ all immatures of varying ages
    091 Shy Albatross cauta - 5+
    861 Shy Albatross steadi - 3
    864 Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross - 2 (one with what looked to be an injured leg)
    971 Providence (Solander's) Petrel - 5+
    069 Wedge-tailed Shearwater - 50+
    071 Short-tailed Shearwater - 100+
    068 Fluttering Shearwater - 300+
    913 Hutton's Shearwater - 1
    106 Australian Pelican - 2
    104 Australasian Gannet - 8+ adults & immatures
    097 Little Black Cormorant - 1
    125 Silver Gull - many
    981 Kelp Gull - 1 immature
    115 Greater Crested Tern - 15+
    114 White-fronted Tern - 5+
    953 Common Tern - 2
    980 Brown Skua - 2
    128 Parasitic (Arctic) Jaeger - 1


    Australasian Gannets of a variety of ages

    We also saw small pods of Common and Bottle-nosed Dolphins and a Fur Seal resting on top of the rudder of one of the anchored ships.


    Short-tailed Shearwater

    Cheers


    Graham