A sea state of two or less, light overcast with decent light, can’t go wrong with that can you? Well, it would have been good if someone had told the wildlife because in the hour it took to finish the last bit of transect 23 we recorded six birds! We did at least see some dolphins, with six encounters with Common Dolphin, involving 27 animals. The very first one was also very photogenic – well, it would have been if the camera was out at the time, it leaped a couple of times across the golden path of the just risen sun.
The hour it took us to get to transect 24 was also light on wildlife, although as we travelled east the number of Gannet increased. A superb Pomarine Skua, still resplendent with decent spoon-shaped tail feathers, flew past minutes before we started the transect, typical.
Weather conditions stayed just about ideal for the first couple of hours of transect 24, very light southerly winds, sea state two or less and a light overcast. Birds were a bit thin on the ground for the first hour, mainly Gannet, but Common Dolphin more than made up for the lack of birds. In the first hour we had 11 encounters involving 147 animals, the encounters coming at regular intervals to keep us busy recording data. There were a handful of tuna recorded as well, including a few animals seen close to the ship which could be identified as Blue-fin Tuna. Sadly, no photos but they are spectacular beasts when you see them leaping close to.
As we headed north the bird sightings increased, more and more Gannet searching or feeding and the odd Great and Sooty Shearwater were adding a little excitement. Just after midday there was even more excitement when a Minke Whale surface a few hundred metres ahead of us. Unusually for a Minke, it surfaced three times, enabling several of us to get good views (and photos). They were the best views of Minke I’ve had on the Peltic for many years.
Shortly after we saw the Minke we came off transect for a trawl, there were some decent-sized shoals of fish on the sonar, though not on the scale of the previous day. Just as we turned away from the transect two Great Skua flew past, really close, second time we’d missed recording a skua on transect by seconds today.
As the net was hauled and surfaced it attracted a large gathering of Gannet, Lesser Black-backed Gull and a few Great Shearwater – there was obviously quite a bit of food in the net. As the cod-end came closer we could see fish sticking out through the finer mesh, no wonder there were so many birds. It was good value entertainment watching the Gannet diving for fish, by now just metres away from the stern of the Endeavour.
As we were hauling today’s star bird did a few circuits of the Endeavour – a beautiful Short-eared Owl. It had started raining, so it was obviously quite keen to find somewhere to land but there was too much activity on board, so after a couple of circuits it disappeared. Perhaps surprisingly, owls are not that rare a sighting on the Peltic survey, with either Short-eared or Long-eared being seen almost every year.
Weather conditions were not quite as ideal when we restarted the transect, the wind had freshened so sea state was now a four-five, and the rain had considerably reduced visibility. However, the number of seabirds were now fantastic, particularly Storm Petrel and Great Shearwater. There were rafts of storm Petrel all over the place and we ended the day logging 631 of them. Having missed all the Great Shearwater the other day, it was great to get a large flock of about 700 directly ahead of the ship, although most passed down the starboard side – the opposite side to our recording box. With the help of that flock, we recorded over 1000 during the day.
In amongst all the Great Shearwater there were a decent number of Sooty Shearwater, with 60 logged. The other surprise sighting of the day was a large flock of Linnet, at least 400, heading vaguely south but obviously not too happy about the poor weather conditions.
Numbers of birds tailed off as we headed towards the end of the transect, we hadn’t seen any further cetaceans after we restarted the transect but the birds more than made up for that. Definitely an impressive day.