Hello all,
We started our day at Santa Barbara with some poor conditions for visibility. We had some heavy fog so it was difficult to get a look at the booby colony. There were some in flight and we got a brief sighting of a Nazca booby, but not quite what we had hoped for. Eventually the fog cleared as we travelled west on a temperature break and enjoyed periods of good visibility.
Pink-footed shearwater photo from a previous trip @ Todd McGrath
We saw more sooty and pink-footed shearwaters, jaegers and Sabine’s gulls, a couple of large flocks of ashy storm petrels and a few black storm petrels mixed in. We came across six minke whales (click for more details and photos) and in the afternoon we saw two orcas: one female and one large male with a tall dorsal fin. They had just fed on something which produced a large slick on the surface and there was lots of birds there including gulls, shearwaters, jaegers and storm petrels. It was exciting for awhile! We are headed northwest to San Miguel Island for the night and headed offshore in deep water for tomorrow.
Capt Art and Team Searcher
