And another epic day offshore from Hatteras, NC! It's almost like Hatteras doesn't want us to leave...or is giving us a good send off...! For me it's a bit bittersweet to move up to Oregon Inlet since we won't likely see many of the Gervais Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon europaeus) up there so it was really amazing to see one today breaching a few times right next to the boat! Thank you to Ed Corey for letting us use his photo of the one we saw today!
There was a nice swell coming in from the east / northeast all day and birds tend to ride the swell...so we were quite happy to find a lot of birds offshore and a number of feeding flocks. The best came in the afternoon less than an hour before we got back to the shelf break. A bit after 13:00 a Desertas Petrel was spotted in the slick and zipped through. As we searched for it all of the sudden there was a light morph Trindade Petrel right next to us! Yes! That's right, we had three species of
Pterodroma around the boat at the same time!! We already had some Black-capped Petrels following us in the slick and about fifteen more popped in right then. Pandemonium ensued and it was hard to know where to look because of course the Desertas and Trindade Petrel were not flying together...and to make it more confusing for people there were Black-capped Petrels seemingly everywhere in the harsh, midday light. But it's a challenge I'll take any day because I mean what seabirder wouldn't??!
And here are a few of the gadflies we saw today: (Desertas Petrel, Trindade Petrel, Black-capped Petrels)
And a Black-capped Petrel giving a Long-tailed Jaeger a chase!
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