Sunday 15th November 2020 SOSSA PELAGIC TRIP, KIAMA, NSW, AUSTRALIA

Here's what was seen outside the harbour on the SOSSA Kiama pelagic on the MV Kato on Sunday 15 Nov. 2020. This replaced the October pelagic which had to be cancelled twice due to poor weather. 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 07.25 hrs, we headed straight out to the outer shelf edge at 34° 46’ 18” S; 151° 09’ 54” E in fairly deep waters (240 m/131 fathoms), about 30 km from the harbour, where there were a number of boats taking part in a shark fishing competition. They had all set up slicks to attract sharks, so we were hoping that birds would be attracted as well. Apart from some Grey-faced Petrels, many moulting inner primaries, there wasn’t much else happening, so we went a couple of kilometres further east and tried chumming and drifting again. Again the commonest species was Grey-faced Petrel, but there were only a few other species attracted to our chum and none was interested enough to come in to the back of the boat to be fed.

After an hour or so of this, we gave up and at 11.15 hrs began to head 6.5 km back west to the inner shelf edge at 34° 46’ 03” S; 151° 06’ 14” E in 174m/95 fathoms, about 25 kms east of the harbour. Here, like at our first chumming spot, all that came in was a single species, a solitary Grey-faced Petrel, in the 30 mins or so we drifted south in the northerly wind. Feeling that conditions for birds at the shelf edge were so unattractive for birds, we tried 5 kms further inshore for our fourth attempt at a productive chum and drift sesssion, stopping at 34° 45’ 11” S; 151° 02’ 57” E, in shallower shelf waters. This was marginally better, with few more species coming in, but the 50 minutes or so we spent here did not provide good numbers of birds, so we called it a day at 13.36 hrs and headed back to harbour in disgust, arriving at 15.05 hrs.

Sea conditions were comfortable in the morning in a 1 m swell, which increased to c. 1.5 m in the afternoon as the wind rose. Sea temperature was 17° inshore and 20.7° at the shelf edge.

Bird highlight was a handsome Providence Petrel, possibly a juvenile in fresh plumage, but this was a day when the there was as much interest in the mammal and fish life as there was in the birds, which were present in remarkably low numbers.

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


125 Silver Gull - 4 (2)
115 Greater Crested Tern - 5 (2)
091 Shy Albatross - 1 (1) a distant bird was probably this species but ID was not confirmed
075 Grey-faced Petrel - 20 (8)
971 Providence (Solander’s) Petrel - 2 (1)
069 Wedge-tailed Shearwater - 6+ (2)
071 Short-tailed Shearwater - 2 (1)
Short-tailed/Sooty Shearwater - 20+ a distant flock at our fourth chumming spot was too far away to be identified with certainty
072 Flesh-footed Shearwater - 1+ (1)
068 Fluttering Shearwater - 1+ (1)
104 Australasian Gannet - 1 (1)
100 Little Pied Cormorant - 1 (1) flew over near the harbour entrance

Mammals/Fish

We saw a small pod of Bottlenose Dolphins on our way out and a larger pod of 20+ Common Dolphins on our way back, along with a number of Sunfish sp. and a fur seal. At the shelf edge a fishing line dropped into a school of baitfish produced a few Slimy Mackerel and many Yellowtail Mackerel.

Report prepared by Graham Barwell