Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     The past two weeks I made it out on two tuna fishing trips.  The trips double for me as fishing and pelagic sightseeing opportunities.  We did well with the yellowfin tuna in the trips, but the pelagic sightings were not quite as fulfilling.  We did not travel out as far as any of the undersea canyons, yet we did venture out some 70 miles in about 200 feet of water.  We had very few if any cetaceans between the two trips and the seabird species and numbers were rather low. We had one minke whale surface near our boat just before heading back to port.  But like many minke sightings, this smallest of the baleen whales quickly swam off before we could see it surface again.  The Wilson’s storm-petrels have dwindled down to small numbers, just a handful of birds around at one time. The shearwater numbers were mostly in the single digits.  I managed only three different species out on the water.  All of the shearwaters I saw were ...

     This past weekend I was scheduled to go in a 24 hour pelagic trip out of Cape May.  I had previously been scheduled to go out on their August trip, but it was postponed by a day and another commitment kept me off that boat.  I was anxious to finally get back out on the water until I received the email late Wednesday postponing this trip too.  My disappointment didn’t last long when my buddy called to invite me on a tuna fishing trip over the weekend.  I wasn’t going to merely be a passenger looking for and photographing marine life in Cape May, but I would have to balance being a passive observer with being part of a fishing crew.  Looking for birds, cetaceans and other marine life would be secondary to cutting bait, tossing chum and other deck duties.  No problem, as either way, I was going to be out on the ocean. We left mid-morning on Saturday and returned Sunday afternoon.  This was one of the rare chances that I would have dayl...