• Saturday 15th December 2018 SOSSA PELAGIC TRIP, KIAMA, NSW, AUSTRALIA

     
    Published on 21-12-2018 03:14 PM
    Here's what was seen outside the harbour on the pelagic from Kiama on the MV Kato on Saturday 15 Dec. 2018. The list uses the IOC Checklist v8.1 (Jan. 2018) for taxonomy, nomenclature & order of species. It gives fairly conservative numbers, which are estimates for the commoner species. There's also a map from Google Earth showing our route.


    Oddly coloured Solander's Petrel

    Leaving Kiama Harbour at 07.30 hrs AEDST, unable to wait for two birders who had seriously misjudged the time, we headed straight out to the shelf edge, wanting to get away from the belt of thick fog which enveloped the coastal strip and reduced visibility to under 150m. Leaving the fog behind us, but with dull, overcast conditions making observations difficult as the grey skies and grey sea sucked the colour out of everything, we travelled east and were tantalised by a large skua which flew past the bow and didn’t stop. Given the time of year, South Polar Skua was a real possibility, but the bird didn’t stay around and remained unidentified with photos proving inconclusive. At 09.25 hrs we stopped at 34° 39’ 52” S; 151° 09’ 46” E, 27.7 km east of Kiama Harbour, in 210m+ shelf edge waters. We remained here for the next 2.5 hours, drifting slowly 2.8 km south, chumming to attract any birds in the vicinity.


    White-faced Storm-petrel

    We were surprised to encounter some of the great albatrosses this late in the season, with the banding team managing to catch a female Wandering Albatross from one of the populations breeding on islands in the Indian Ocean (confirmed by bill measurements). A Grey-faced Petrel was also caught and banded. But the bird which attracted the most attention was a dark-headed petrel with grey upperparts, white wing flashes on the underwing and with a thick white band around its chest region. We tried to turn this into a Herald Petrel, but concluded after some discussion and head-scratching that it must be a juvenile Providence Petrel.

    We travelled back up the slick we’d made and stopped again in 230m+ shelf edge waters at 34° 41’ 09’ S; 151° 10’ 40” E at 12.00 hrs. Here we were unsuccessful in luring an Antipodean Albatross (gibsoni) to the catching net, so, with nothing else of particular interest coming in after half an hour, we decided to head back and moved west 5.4 km to 160m+ shelf edge waters at 34° 39’ 12” S; 151° 07’ 06” E. Here we chummed and drifted 540 m south for another half hour, but the mixture of birds didn’t change, the albatrosses were reluctant to come in and be caught, so we continued back in towards the harbour.



    We stopped for 40 mins from 14.35 hrs in 70m+ shelf waters at 34° 40’ 51” S; 150° 55’ 13” E, 5.62 km from the harbour, in order to see if there were any interesting jaegers or shearwaters among the mainly Wedge-tailed Shearwaters frequenting this area, but found little new, so continued in to the harbour. As it happened, the bulk of the shearwaters were congregated not far from the harbour entrance. We arrived back at our mooring at 15.45 hrs.

    Sea conditions were somewhat bumpy in the 1.5-2 m swell, with one of those aboard suffering bouts of sea sickness as the boat rolled. Sea temperature was around 21.5° at the shelf edge, slightly cooler inshore.

    Highlights were the good numbers of great albatrosses and storm petrels this late in the year.

    Species seen outside the harbour, maximum at any one time in brackets:
    063 Wilson’s Storm Petrel - 7+ (5+)
    065 White-faced Storm Petrel - 8+ (6)
    086 Wandering Albatross - 2 (1) one female caught; an Indian Ocean bird
    846-47 Antipodean Albatross - 2 (2) both presumed gibsoni
    091 Shy Albatross – 1 (1) considered a Tasmanian-breeding cauta
    075 Grey-faced Petrel - 40+ (20+) by far the commonest petrel at the shelf edge; all moulting primaries
    971 Providence Petrel - 2 (1) a white-bellied bird caused some ID problems
    069 Wedge-tailed Shearwater - 400+ (200+) most birds were close inshore
    071 Short-tailed Shearwater - 20+ (2)
    072 Flesh-footed Shearwater - 15+ (3)
    Fluttering/Hutton’s Shearwater - 2 (2)
    104 Australasian Gannet - 5 (3)
    096 Great Cormorant - 1 (1) just outside the harbour entrance
    125 Silver Gull - 20+ (15+)
    115 Greater Crested Tern - 5 (1)
    South Polar/Brown Skua - 1 (1) frustratingly brief flyby and poor light didn’t allow for definite identification
    945 Pomarine Jaeger - 3 (3)
    933 Long-tailed Jaeger - 3 (3)

    A pod of unidentified dolphins came in to investigate us while we were stopped at the shelf edge and we saw a large sunfish sp. on the journey out. No other fish or cetaceans were seen.

    Graham Barwell