Today was a gorgeous day offshore, though this morning the sea still held a bit of swell from the wind yesterday and last night. While diversity was a bit low, we found really great numbers of Sargasso Shearwaters out there past the shelf break! They were definitely the seabird highlight today with the highest number of individuals out there, we counted 170. Black-capped Petrels came in second with 52 individuals tallied and we were delighted to see some Bridled Terns! A highlight for me was seeing our first pod of Gervais' Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon europaeus), also known as Gulf Stream Beaked Whale or Antillean Beaked Whale, of the spring! There were at least six, possibly seven individuals in the group including at least one calf that looked like it was born this year. They are about seven feet at birth and this one was a bit larger than that but still quite small in comparison with the other individuals in the pod.
eBird Trip Report can be found here: 1 June 2025
Thanks to everyone who joined us out there today and a big thank you to our guest leaders Todd McGrath, Chris Sloan, and Liam Waters who helped Brian, Daniel & me lead the trip!
Of course here are some of the Mesoplodon europaeus!
And some of the cute, little Sargasso Shearwaters
And one of our Bridled Terns
We also passed our weather buoy this afternoon on the way in!
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