Our wonderful vessel, the R/V Shearwater, is named after an equally wonderful seabird. Though there are many species of shearwaters, we saw two- Sooty Shearwaters (four letter species code= SOSH!) and Pink-footed Shearwaters. They weren’t too hard to tell apart- Sooties are much darker than their pink-footed cousins. Usually we would see one or two skimming along the waves, but sometime they would be in large flocks feeding on schools of fish or other prey. The sooty shearwaters don’t breed on the Channel Islands, but they sevre as a handy lay-over during the shearwater’s migration from New Zealand to the Bering Sea!
The boat-version of the shearwater leaves the harbor after dropping us off.
A flock of shearwaters scatters in front of our ship. Anacapa in the background
A Sooty Shearwater soars over the sea