• Saturday 28th February 2015 SOSSA PELAGIC TRIP, WOLLONGONG, NSW, AUSTRALIA.

    Here's a list of what was seen from the Sandra K outside the harbour on Saturday 28 Febuary. It uses the BARC Australian Checklist (v2015 Jan. based on IOC v5.1) 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.


    Grey-faced Petrel

    We travelled out to 34° 20’ 49” S; 151° 23’ 18” E, 45 km ENE of Wollongong Harbour in 300m+ pelagic waters, where we stopped, chummed and made a slick to see what might come in, 11.30-12.15 hrs, drifting 2.3 km SSW to 34° 21’ 56’ S; 151° 22’ 36” E, then turned back in, arriving in the harbour at 15.45hrs. On both the way out and the way back, good numbers of Wedge-tailed and Flesh-footed Shearwaters were caught, banded and released.


    White-capped Albatross

    Seas flat for most of the day in very light winds, picking up a little in the afternoon as the wind got up. Sea temperature 23.7° in the harbour, 26° out past the shelf edge.



    Sightings: maximum number seen at any one time in brackets

    088 Black-browed Albatross 3 (2) adult or subadult
    Black-browed/Campbell Albatross 12+ (5) young birds
    091 Shy Albatross 10+ (4) some cauta, but possible steadi present too
    075 Great-winged Petrel 4 (2) NZ breeding gouldi
    069 Wedge-tailed Shearwater 200+ (100)
    070 Sooty Shearwater 1 1 possible, but not seen well enough to be certain
    071 Short-tailed Shearwater 15+ (3)
    072 Flesh-footed Shearwater 80+ (40)
    068 Fluttering Shearwater 1 (1)
    Fluttering/Hutton's Shearwater 2 (2)
    913 Hutton’s Shearwater 3 (1)
    104 Australasian Gannet 1 (1) adult
    125 Silver Gull 50+ (30)
    981 Kelp Gull 1 (1)
    115 Greater Crested Tern 20+ (6)
    945 Pomarine Skua 30+ (10)
    128 Parasitic Jaeger 1 (1) possible, but identification not confirmed
    Welcome Swallow 4 (4)

    We saw a small pod of what were probably Bottlenose Dolphin inshore. Some flying fish were also seen.

    Cheers

    Graham Barwell