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CalendarKiama Pelagic Trip Report Saturday 16th December 2023
Vessel: M.V Kato
Departed: 07:35 returned at 15:00
Seas: South easterly, around 1-1.5m in the *morning, decreasing to 0.5m from* midday as the wind dropped.
Weather: Mostly cloudy, with a few clear patches. There were a number of showers during the day, but they were brief.
Temperature range: 15 to 24 degrees.
Wind: 10 - 15 knots south easterly on our way out, dropping to 5 knots from around midday.
Sea surface temperature: 22 degrees in shore, 24.4 degrees at the shelf.
Report
This is the trip report from outside the harbour on a Kiama pelagic on the MV Kato on Saturday16th December 2023. The trip list uses the IOC Checklist v12.1 (Jan. 2022) for taxonomy, nomenclature. It gives fairly conservative numbers, which are estimates for the commoner species.
Leaving the harbour at 07:30 am, we headed out in a north-easterly direction towards the edge of the continental shelf. There were three Kelp Gulls on the rocks as we departed.
Overall, for the trip the numbers of birds were down and there were no mammals seen.
We stopped at 120 fathoms and began to chum using chicken mince, fish, and tuna oil. We drifted south and went up the slick once. Shearwater numbers were down from the previous migration months. There were a few albatrosses and two grey-face petrels about. There was a group of Common Terns out close to the shelf. Although there were people ready to band birds, no birds were caught. We arrived back at 3pm.
Bird species seen outside the harbour, maximum at any one time in brackets:
Silver Gull: 20(5)
Kelp Gull: 3 (3)
Common Tern: 5 (5)
Greater Crested Tern: 4 (3)
Shy Albatross: 10(2)
Black-browed Albatross: 2(1)
Grey-faced Petrel: 2(2)
Flesh-footed Shearwater: 20 (7)
Wedge-tailed Shearwater: 60 (20)
Short-tailed Shearwater: 15 (4)
Hutton's Shearwater: 3 (1)
Long-tailed Jaeger: 2 (2)
Pomarine Jaeger: 2 (1)
Report prepared by J Webber