• Saturday 25th October 2014 SOSSA PELAGIC TRIP, WOLLONGONG, NSW, AUSTRALIA.

    Here's a list of what was seen from the Sandra K outside the harbour on Saturday 25 October. It uses the BARC Australian Checklist (v2014 July based on IOC v4.2) for taxonomy, nomenclature & order of species and gives fairly conservative numbers. For the commoner species the numbers are estimates. There's also a .jpg file from Google Earth showing our route.


    2 Wandering and a Black-browed Albatross, as well as a Short-tailed Shearwater.

    Leaving at 07.10 hrs, we travelled out to 34° 36’ 04” S; 151° 14’ 46” E, 36.9 km SE of Wollongong Harbour in 300m+ pelagic waters, where we stopped and drifted 2.25 km SSW, 10.35-11.26 hrs, catching and banding a female Wandering Albatross and a Black Petrel. We then turned back in, travelling WNW to 34° 31’ 56” S; 151° 06’ 41” E, 22.4 km SE of the harbour in 130m+ shelf waters, where we stopped & drifted 3.38 km WNW, 12.46-13.24 hrs, with rough conditions preventing any banding, before continuing in to 34° 26’ 34” S; 150° 56’ 33” E, in inshore waters 4 km SE of the harbour in the lee of the Five Islands, where we stopped, caught and banded 3 female Wandering Albatrosses, 15.05-15.31 hrs, before returning to the harbour at 15.53.



    Seas were bumpy on a 1-2 m swell. Sea temperature was 18.2° inshore and 20.2° at the shelf break.



    Maximum number seen at any one time in brackets:

    005 Little Penguin - 1 (1)
    086 Wandering Albatross - 7+ (6) 4 non-breeding females banded
    846 Antipodean Albatross - 2+ (2) both apparently gibsoni
    Wandering Albatross type - 5+ (5) includes one brown immature
    973 Northern Royal Albatross - 1 (1)
    088 Black-browed Albatross - 3 (2) adult or subadult
    859 Campbell Albatross - 1 (1) adult
    Black-browed/Campbell Albatross - 11+ (11) immatures
    091 Shy Albatross 3 (2) - includes 1 adult cauta & 1 imm. steadi
    075 Great-winged Petrel - 1+ (1) gouldiae
    971 Providence Petrel - 3 (2)
    917 Black Petrel - 2 (2) one banded
    069 Wedge-tailed Shearwater - 100+ (50)
    071 Short-tailed Shearwater - 500+ (100)
    072 Flesh-footed Shearwater - 3 (3)
    068 Fluttering Shearwater - 1 (1)
    913 Hutton’s Shearwater - 1 (1)
    Fluttering/Hutton’s Shearwater - 1 (1)
    063 Wilson’s Storm Petrel - 20+ (8)
    106 Australian Pelican - 2 (2)
    104 Australasian Gannet - 3+ (1)
    125 Silver Gull - 100 (50)
    981 Kelp Gull - 4 (4) adults
    115 Greater Crested Tern - 10 (7)
    945 Pomarine Skua - 1 (1)
    128 Parasitic Jaeger - 2 (1)

    We also saw a small pod of Common Bottlenose Dolphin and one Australian Fur Seal.


    Cheers
    Graham