Saturday 28th August 2020 SOSSA PELAGIC TRIP, KIAMA, NSW, AUSTRALIA

Here's what was seen outside the harbour on the Kiama pelagic arranged by SOSSA for the Illawarra Birders group on the MV Kato on Friday 28 Aug. 2020. The trip list uses the IOC Checklist v10.1 (Jan. 2020) for taxonomy, nomenclature & order of species. This is a change from Kiama pelagic reports from previous years with the species sequence differing significantly. It gives fairly conservative numbers, which are estimates for the commoner species. There's also a map from Google Earth showing our route and chumming spots.

Leaving Kiama Harbour at 07.30 hrs we headed straight out to the shelf edge, where we stopped at 09.30 in 205m/112 fathoms at 34° 43’ 20”S; 151° 08’ 22” E. Here we set up a slick using chicken mince and gradually drifted 2.7 km north in the south-west wind over the next hour, seeing what the chum would bring in. There were good numbers of the usual petrels and smaller albatrosses about, but no prions or storm petrels, even though we travelled up the slick at one point to make sure they were feeding too far from the boat to be seen.

We decided to try deeper water, so moved 4.75 km further west to 34° 42’ 20” S; 151° 12’ 03” E in 311m/170 fathoms, where we repeated our previous pattern, setting up a slick and drifting 4.3 km northwards until 12.00 hrs, when we moved back into the area closest to the start of the drop off from the edge of the continental shelf. Here we made our third chumming stop at 34° 39’ 36” S; 151° 09’ 15” E in 210m/115 fathoms. The petrels weren’t such a feature of the species mix at this location, but our chumming did bring in 6 Buller’s Albatross at one point, a bird once considered a rare species in NSW waters, and a single large albatross, an Antipodean, subspecies gibsoni, from the Auckland Islands. After again drifting north for about an hour and a quarter, we had to begin our journey back to harbour at 13.42 hrs.

On the way back in, we stopped for about 20 mins at 34° 39’ 09” S; 150° 56’ 28” E, 7.7 km E of the harbour in much shallower, 73m/40 fathoms inshore waters, to see what shearwaters might be around. We had good views of flocks of mainly Hutton’s Shearwaters with a few Fluttering Shearwaters mixed up with them, a change from the morning when, in the same species mix, Fluttering Shearwaters were more predominant. Large mixed feeding flocks of these two species are a feature of NSW waters from at least Kiama north to Newcastle in Aug.-Sept., prior to the birds’ departure for their breeding grounds in New Zealand. Eventually we arrived back in the harbour at 15.45 hrs.

Sea conditions were fairly bumpy on the way out in a swell of 1.5 to 2 m, but easing to about 1m in the afternoon as the wind dropped. Sea temperature at the shelf edge was 17° with the current coming from the south.

Highlights were the Buller’s Albatrosses and the flocks of Fluttering and Hutton’s Shearwaters.

Species seen outside the harbour, maximum at any one time in brackets:


125 Silver Gull - 4 (2)
115 Greater Crested Tern - 30+ (15)
846/47 Antipodean Albatross - 1 (1) subspecies gibsoni, possibly a male bird
088 Black-browed Albatross - 5+ (4) adults and imms
091/861 Shy Albatross - 5 (2) subspecies not determined, but at least one likely juvenile steadi present
864 Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross - 4 (2) adults and at least one imm.
931 Buller’s Albatross - 8 (6)
937 Northern Giant Petrel - 1 (1) juv.
075 Grey-faced Petrel - 15+ (2)
971 Providence (Solander’s) Petrel - 20+ (5)
069 Wedge-tailed Shearwater - 15+ (10) first returns after their winter absence
068 Fluttering Shearwater - 250+ (50)
913 Hutton’s Shearwater - 250+ (50)
104 Australasian Gannet - 2 (1)

Mammals

Over the course of the day we saw at least 10 Humpback Whales, some breeching and one pod surfacing not far from the boat, and had a visit from a small pod of Common Dolphins. A fur seal was also seen on the way out to the shelf.


Report prepared by Graham Barwell