Hello all,
We’ve enjoyed a tremendous day offshore in deep water today! We left San Miguel Island after breakfast and it didn’t take long for three black-footed albatross to join us and stay for a while. Then loads of sooty and pink-footed shearwaters arrived, followed by Buller’s shearwaters. We had albatross behind the boat for almost the entire day.
We saw a few lue whales but were mostly able to just view their blows due to windy conditions. The storm petrel watching was really good. Leader Dave Povey kept a fish oil slick behind the boat all day, so we attracted loads of them. The highlight was a Townsend’s storm petrel which is a bird that one customer needed to make his list an even 700 species in the U.S. Quite an accomplishment!
Leach’s, Wilson’s, black and ashy storm petrels were added to the list of storm petrels. We encountered a few more blue whales and then we arrived on the San Juan Seamount. This is is a shallow that comes up to 1800 feet of water out of 12,000 feet depth. It can be a very productive spot located 190 miles west of San Diego.
The San Juan Seamount did not disappoint–we had our first look at a Cook’s petrel. This a bird we all hope to see on this trip. We saw multiple Cook’s in the area along with Bullers, sooty and pink-footed shearwaters. Albatross found us as well. We were treated with a red-billed tropicbird and then at the end of the day, a Nazca booby flew right over the boat.
We are looking forward to tomorrow!
Capt Art and Team Searcher
