Captain's Blog

Many thanks to John Schwarz for his blog posting about the pelagic tour: http://www.birdspix.com/. He includes short video footage of the Baird’s beaked whales too.

Hello all,
Today we started in the Tanner/Cortez bank area. There was a tremendous amount of birds there starting at daylight. Black-vented shearwaters were everywhere which is significant because they generally are closer to shore. Todd, John and Dave all mentioned they haven’t seen this amount of black-vented shearwaters ever in all their trips. Maybe the warm water conditions have something to do with it. Several blackfooted albatross appeared this afternoon. We had common dolphins. Risso’s dolphin , blue whales and California sea lions in the marine mammal department. Great weather and a great day again.
Today’s picture is a group of four albatross in our chum slick at sunset.

Team Searcher

Hello all,
We had another good day a long way offshore. We spent the day in really deep water– 2000 fathoms and deeper–off the shelf. We started on the Rodriguez Seamount and then went SSE to the San Juan Seamount late this afternoon. We were over 200 miles west of San Diego all day. There were lots of birds to look at at various times during the day and some whale sightings as well.
Pink-footed, sooty, black-vented and Bullers shearwaters, black-footed albatross, red-billed tropicbirds, jeagers, loads of storm petrels (ashy, Leachs, black). Arctic, elegant and common terns, western and Sabine’s gulls. There wasn’t too much time spent without birds today.
We saw Risso’s and common dolphin and a very large blue whale. It is interesting to think about seeing blue whales within 5 miles west of San Diego and then seeing them over 200 miles west of San Diego too! I think it means there is more and more blue whales in the Eastern Pacific. Great news!
Today’s picture is a Risso’s dolphin at the surface with more just under the surface in the foreground.
Team Searcher

Hello all,
Another great day with lots of birds. The highlights are south polar skua, pomarine and parasitic jeager, black-footed albatross. We had plenty of storm petrels and pink-footed shearwaters all day, lots of common dolphin, Risso’s dolphin, bottlenose dolphin and the highlight was a group of 20 Baird’s beaked whales. The weather cooperated with light winds all day and not much sea or swell. We are headed into San Miguel Island to have dinner and get some rest before heading west to the Rodriguez Seamount to start tomorrow.
Today’s photo is Dave Povey (chummed extraordinaire) in white hat and some fellow birders at the chum station.
Team Searcher

Hello all,
We had a fantastic day with a great start to our pelagic birding trip. We left San Diego harbor and within the first hour we started seeing black-vented shearwaters and we saw them through out the day. There were a few pink-footed shearwater as well.
Probably the highlight for the day was Craveri’s murrlets. We had some really good looks at these birds after the breeze subsided late in the day. Another high light was Sabines’ gull. We saw multiple storm petrels with the majority being blacks. We did see several Ashy’s and a few Least, a lifer for  a few people. We saw lots of Elegant and Common terns, Western gulls, and  a few California gulls.
We saw some marine mammals today with a good look at a bue whale, fin whale, and lots of short-beaked common dolphin. We also saw two northern elephant seals at the surface getting air. We had a very busy afternoon.
Team Searcher

Hello all,
We have had a great day offshore northern Baja today. We are 100 miles south of San Diego. We have seen 20 black-footed albatross, black and Leach’s storm petrels, northern fulmars, pink-footed and sooty shearwaters and the highlight has been 6 Cook’s petrels. We also had a report from another boat 30 miles to the west of us. They were seeing multiple Cook’s petrels today.
Team Searcher