Southport Seamount pelagic

Hi all,

Well, last weekend I was fortunate enough to be given a place on the pelagic trip that went out to the Queensland and Britannia seamounts, 100 nautical miles due east from Southport QLD. I rang as soon as I heard about a vacancy on the trip because of the chance of going on an overnight pelagic trip – an extended pelagic is excellent medicine for anyone who has Pelagidipphobia as I do (smile).

It was also a chance for me to see a new bird, White-bellied Storm-petrel. So, on Friday morning I hopped onto a Red-tailed QANTAS-bird (I plan to keep using capitals for bird names) and flew north. I also secretly hoped to see a New Zealand Storm-petrel but I felt that was a long shot and not to be banked on.

The TexasT, our “luxury motor yacht” for the trip turned out to be LUXURY all the way, especially for birders. She is 25 metres long and fitted with stabilisers so even in the 25 knot south-east winds we could leave our cups of tea and beer cans on the table as we reached for our binoculars and they just sat there. The boat barely rolled and nothing fell over, including the birders on board. True luxury; enough wind to lift the birds and no discomfort to the watchers. It was a tough trip, true “extreme birding” (smile).

Well, as most people on B-A know now we did see New Zealand Storm-petrel, in fact we saw about 10 of them. It was certainly way beyond my wildest dreams and I still smile every time I think about it. We also saw a White-bellied Storm-petrel so I was particularly pleased with the trip as I saw two new pelagic seabirds.

In all I saw 21 of the 22 species seen, I always seem to be looking the wrong way at some point of a trip, and got very good views of the all the birds in the sunny conditions.

My special thanks to Paul Walbridge for organising this trip and I hope those going out on the regular Southport trip this weekend see the NZ stormies too.

Cheers