Today was the final day at sea before we arrived at St Helena. There was more expectation from the passengers that we would see more Seabirds & more people on deck looking.
Los Bandidos (John & Jemi Holmes): John has been publishing a number of Blog Posts of the Odyssey which can be found here. It is well worth a look as John is a great photographer
Hadie (left) & Roy confirming that the benches on the top deck behind the bridge were still popular
Yorkshire Geoff Dodds: My cabin mate had finally left editing the Yorkshire Bird Report & appeared in the sun
As we were approximately 250 nautical miles from the St Helena at dawn, we were still out in the deep oceans & would remain so for the rest of the day. Consequently, it was still a fairly quiet day at sea for Seabirds. I saw more individuals than than on the last two days put together, but that wasn't hard given I had only seen nine Seabirds over those two days. The commonest species were Arctic Terns which were moving North, but all remained distant. There were also a few Red-billed Tropicbirds seen during the day, including one which came overhead to check out the Plancius.
An early morning small party of Dolphins looked promising as they
were heading straight for the Plancius. We were all hoping for some bow
waving, but clearly, they had other ideas as this was the best photo I
obtained & we lost them soon after picking them up.
Dolphin sp.: You can't win them all
The Seabird highlight occurred late morning as we picked up a party
of six Storm-petrels resting on the sea a few hundred metres in front of
the Plancius.
Band-rumped
Storm-petrel taxonomy is complex. A few years ago, Band-rumped
Storm-petrels were understood to breed on islands in the Tropical
Atlantic & Pacific Oceans including the Portuguese Berlengas
Islands, Madeira, Canaries, Azores, Cape Verde, Ascension Island, St
Helena, as well as, the Galapagos, Hawaii & islands belonging to
Japan. In the last decade, studies into the breeding times of year, DNA,
vocalisation & morphology have identified that there are probably
three additional species which breed on the Tropical North Atlantic
islands. Further studies are now underway to extend these studies into
some of the other Atlantic populations of Band-rumped Storm-petrel & it is
likely that this will reveal additional species when these studies have
been completed. The current understanding of the former Band-rumped
Storm-petrel species is:-
- Cape Verde Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma jabejabe) breeds in Cape Verde from Oct to June
- Monteiro's Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma monteiroi) breeds in the Azores in Mar to Oct
- Band-rumped Storm-petrels (also known as Madeiran Storm-petrel) (Oceanodroma castro) breeds around Madeira including the Desertas Islands, the Salvagens Islands & the Canaries in Mar to Oct
- Grant's Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma granti) breeds in the Berlengas Islands, Madeira & the Canaries & associated islands & Azores in Aug to Mar. This has been proposed as a future split (but is yet to be described)
- Studies of the Band-rumped Storm-petrels which breed on Ascension Island & St Helena are only just starting.
