Hi Texbirders and Pelagic Fanatics,
The end of August is a great time for a Texas Pelagic trip and when the weather
cooperates, like it did this day, I just know good things can happen. We had to
adjust the trip times and shorten it by 2 hours due to Osprey's owners concerns
about maintenance issues. So we wouldn't be able to reach the hoped for
objective of the Camel's Head. Never-the-less with 14 hours we would have a lot
of time in ultra-deep pelagic waters and would make it out to 3,000 ft waters
depth. As of 4:00am Buoy 42020 was reading about 2 foot seas and the forecast
was for 2-3 ft seas for the day. It would never get over 2 foot seas for the
day.
As we cleared the S Padre Island jetties in the full moonlit night you could
hardly tell we had reached the open Gulf by the wave action. But gradually the
2 foot seas lulled a number of tired birders to sleep at various nooks all over
the rubberized deck. As the first hints of a lightening sky appeared birders
began to ready themselves for the day ahead. We were treated to a beautiful
moonset and about 30 minutes later a beautiful sunrise.
Shortly after sunrise the first birds of the day Royal Terns flew by then like
a fighter plane in hot pursuit a Pomarine Jaeger harassed them off into the
distance. The next bit of excitement would come in the form of 6 Atlantic
Spotted Dolphins that caught up with the boat for a brief bow joy ride. We
reached the shelf edge drop-off around 9:00am and as soon as we did things
really started to happen. Our first group of 4 Storm-Petrels all were Leach's.
A squadron of 4 Masked Boobies flying in formation like dive bombers strafed
the boat and circled it a number of times until their mission was accomplished.
Then another flock of 10 - 15 Stormies sitting on the glassy water also were
all Leach's as best as we could determine. We were having trouble finding a
Band-rumped Storm-Petrels in the bunches of Leach's. Normally Band-rumped
Storm-Petrels are the predominate species in Texas Waters by a wide margin, but
not today. It seemed that every flock of Storm-Petrels we encountered, and
there were a lot of them, was predominately or entirely Leach's Storm-Petrels.
And so it would stay that way for the rest of the day. Band-Rumped Storm
Petrels are typically becoming scarcer by late August but we have never
encountered so many Leach's before. We tallied about 110 Storm-Petrels for the
day which is a record number for a Texas Pelagic. The previous high number was
88 Band-Rumped Storm-Petrels on July 15, 2000. But even more incredible was
that at least 66 or 83 (depending on who's records you look at) were identified
as Leach's and the majority of the remaining unidentified storm-petrel sp were
probably also Leach's. We only positively identified 7 Band-Rumpeds for the
day. And so the morning went Storm-petrel flock after Storm-petrel flock, all
of them roosting on the flat seas and visible from a distance. They wouldn't
allow us to approach very close though before they flushed. Interspersed with
the stormies were smatterings of Audubon's Shearwaters, Cory's Shearwaters,
Sooty Terns and a couple of Pomarine Jaegers.
The day continued on this way with near constant bird action until 12:50 pm
when Todd on the bow called out Mammals at 3:00 o'clock! We turned towards
them and soon what turned out to be a Beaked Whale(s) of the Mesoplodon genus
appeared again. There was some question as to whether there were 1 or 2 animals
as only surfaced one at a time, but John O'Brien caught the diagnostic beak in
one of his photos! This was the proof we needed that it was most likely either
a Blainville's Beaked Whale or a Gervais' Beaked Whale. Specific identification
is nearly impossible with this genus unless a mature male is spotted and the
dentition is visible and photographed. They probably surfaced 4-5 times then
were gone, but enough for everyone to see them and photograph them. Tripp
thinks he has a photo of a second whale from a look at the dorsal fins, but we
are waiting for confirmation.
Only 20 minutes later I spotted a large raft of seabirds roosting on the water
about a mile away. As we approached the raft fish started jumping amoung the
raft and it was clear to me the birds were sitting on top of a tuna school.
Immediately I called out to watch for Whale Sharks and sure enough with 30
seconds the huge snout of a Whale Shark appeared at the surface in the middle
of the birds and breaking tuna. The curious and docile Whale Shark soon was
swimming towards our boat, much to the screams of excitement from everyone
onboard. The Whale shark passed less than 10 feet off our port side as everyone
stared on slack-jawed. It wasn't a huge on but we estimated it at about 15 -17
feet long. They have been documented as large as 41 feet long, with fish tales
of even bigger ones. A few diehard birders were still pointing out that Hello!!
there is a Great Shearwater out there too. Well the Shark swam off and our
attention was directed to the Great Shearwater our 10th pelagic species for the
day!
Soon after all this excitement as the adrenaline subsided we were motoring in
over the shelf and activity noticeably slowed down for the first time all day.
But we weren't done yet. As we approached our first anchored shrimper it was
clear there were a few roosting Magnificent Frigatebirds on board for a siesta.
As we got closer we could see that there were five male Frigatebirds hanging
out. So we started chumming and soon had a feeding frenzy of Laughing Gulls,
Royal Terns, 7 Frigatebirds (2 more flew in) and a Pomarine Jaeger putting on a
nice show for us.
The second shrimp boat had 2 Masked Boobies roosting on it and was soon joined
by a third. At the forth shrimper another Jaeger came blasting in that at
first looked big enough to be a Skua. But it was only a dark Pomarine Jaeger.
By 6:30pm after a long day we reached the jetties with an amazing, exceptional
day behind us. First I want to thank all our participants. We have a lot of
regulars returning trip after trip and year after year to continue to
experience the wonders of a day at sea. And to all our first timers who I'm
sure had high hopes and who undoubtedly experienced such a great day offshore.
I hope you're hooked on Texas Pelagics and will join us again soon. Once again
our leaders did an outstanding job spotting birds and providing commentary on
the seabirds and marine life we were observing. I want to thank our leaders in
alphabetical order: Arman Moreno, Brad McKinney, Dwight Peake, Eric Carpenter,
Erik Bruhnke, John O'Brien, Kelly Smith, Mary Gustafson, Petra Hockey, Randy
Duncan and Todd McGrath. Our Captain Bobby and the Mates Dillon, Fabian and
Clay did a fantastic job as well. Also the newly renovated Osprey has proven to
the an excellent platform to have all this amazing fun on, the upper deck is
great especially in nice calm seas like we had today.
10 PELAGIC SPECIES:
Coryâs Shearwater - 14
Great Shearwater -1
Audubonâs Shearwater - 60
Leachâs Storm-Petrel - 66 (or 83)
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel - 7
Magnificent Frigatebird - 13
Masked Booby - 8
Sooty Tern - 21
Bridled Tern - 7
Pomarine Jaeger - 5
storm-petrel (sp) - 37 (or 20)
BRTE / SOTE - 1
Total Storm-Petrels = 110
Probably about 100 were Leach's Storm-Petrels
The previous high for Texas Pelagics was 15 seen on August 8th, 20 15 Texas
Pelagic.
Prior to that 4 LESP had been see twice on Texas Pelagics and usually only 1 or
2 on any other trip.
NEARSHORE SEABIRDS:
Brown Pelican - 13
Laughing Gull - 187
Least Tern - 3
Black Tern - 205
Common Tern - 2
Royal Tern - 102
Sandwich Tern - 5
MARINE MAMMALS:
Atlantic Spotted Dolphin - 6
Bottlenose Dolphin - PELAGIC - 3
Bottlenose Dolphin - INSHORE - 4
Mesoplodon sp. Beaked whale - 1 or 2
FISH:
Whale shark (Rhincodon typus) - 1
Yellow-finned Tuna school - 1
Bonita / Skipjack school - 1
Tripletail - 1
Longbill Spearfish - 1
LANDBIRD MIGRANTS:
Louisiana / Northern Waterthrush - 1
Cliff Swallow - 1
Good seabirding,
Gary Hodne
<http://www.TexasPelagics.com> www.TexasPelagics.com
ps I will send out a spreadsheet with all sightings and GPS as soon as itâs
completed.
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