• Saturday 22nd March 2014 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 BARC Australian Checklist (v2014 Jan. based on IOC v4.1) for taxonomy, nomenclature & order of species and give my usual fairly conservative estimates of numbers. For the commoner species the numbers are estimates.


    Wilson's Storm-petrels

    Leaving at 07.20 hrs we travelled out to 34° 19' 43" S; 151° 18' 35" E, 40.2 km ENE of the harbour in 180m+ shelf edge waters, where we stopped and drifted in the strong current 4.2 km SSW to 34° 21' 39" S; 151° 18' 35" E in 190+ shelf edge waters, 11.48-12.30 hrs, before turning in and arriving back in the harbour at 15.35 hrs. Seas were fairly calm with the sea temperature 24.5° at the shelf edge. I've attached a .jpg file from Google Earth showing our route.



    Throughout the day we caught and banded shearwaters, 92 Wedge-tailed and 28 Flesh-footed. This included 4 Wedge-tailed Shearwaters which were caught again within a short period (6-60 mins) of having been banded, and 4 Wedge-tailed Shearwaters which had been banded on other occasions.


    Pomarine Jaeger

    Maximum number at any one time in brackets


    088 Black-browed Albatross 2 (1) 1 adult and 1 immature
    075 Great-winged Petrel gouldi 2 (1) note that IOC treats gouldi and macroptera as a single species
    069 Wedge-tailed Shearwater 250 (50)
    071 Short-tailed Shearwater 10 (1)
    072 Flesh-footed Shearwater 100 (25)
    913 Hutton's Shearwater 1 (1)
    063 Wilson's Storm Petrel 2 (2)
    104 Australasian Gannet 10+ (4)
    125 Silver Gull 30 (20)
    981 Kelp Gull 2 (2)
    115 Greater Crested Tern 7+ (6)
    945 Pomarine Skua 8+ (4)

    A seal was seen resting on the rudder of one of the moored ships. No cetaceans seen.

    Cheers

    Graham