Shearwater Journeys Part 1

This past Friday my boyfriend and I had our pelagic trip with Shearwater Journeys. This is Debi Shearwater's (she legally changed her name to shearwater) last year doing pelagic bird watching trips, so I knew I had to experience it at least once. She is very well-known in the birding community for her 30+ years of doing these trips, and Anjelica Huston even played a character directly inspired by Debi in the movie The Big Year, which also starred Jack Black, Steve Martin, and my high school crush Owen Wilson (her character's name was "Annie Auklet," by the way).

We had to wake up at 4:30am to be ready to leave for Monterey by 5:00am. We were able to stick to our schedule pretty closely and arrive at the docks around 6:30am despite leaving a few minutes late and stopping for coffee and hot chocolate.

During the orientation/briefing before departure, I was surprised to learn that we would be chumming (tossing fish off the back to attract seabirds). I had recently read that the practice was no longer permitted, but it turns out Debi's trips are the only ones in the country with special permission granted by the NOAA to chum. So, for the entire trip there was someone cutting anchovies and tossing them off the back of the boat. This attracted gulls which in turn served to attract the seabirds. As a vegan and animal right's activist, that was the least enjoyable part of the trip for me.

I last minute decided to bring a camera to try and take pictures of the wildlife. Initially I did not even consider it because I do not have even the bare minimum that is usually recommended for bird photography, but the day before the trip I had a feeling I would regret not bringing a camera just in case. Seeing the cameras of some of the other people on the trip made me a little self conscious, as there were more than a few equipped lenses that probably easily cost over $4k, and one or two that had to be $10k+ lenses. I am sure they got some amazing photos. For comparison, my camera (Canon 30D) was given to me by my mom's coworker years ago and the lens (Canon 55-250mm) is one I found sitting on my mom's shelf....I have never put any money into bird photography; the main reason I take a camera bird watching is so I can snap pictures of birds I can't identify and review them at home to reach an ID (something that is often impossible in the field when the bird is only visible for a few seconds).

Anyway, I am really glad I brought my camera because the bird I wanted to see most was also the only bird to come very close to the boat and even rest in the water near us, so even I was able to get some decent photos:

The black-footed albatross, Phoebastria nigripes, (BFAL)

So beautiful. I tried not to think about how much plastic was probably in her belly, or how much she may have fed to any chicks she had raised over the years. The reality is, if this bird had raised any chicks over her lifetime (BFAL can live for decades, raising one chick a year), they likely all had been fed plastic at least once (but probably more)...

I didn't intend to end this post on such a somber note, but I woke up feeling under the weather and already feel like I need to rest before class. I will post about the rest of the trip on another day.