In March of 2012 I made enquiries about the possibility of doing a Pelagic trip off Cape Point with Zest for Birds and my whole Cape trip in my Sabbatical was focussed around it taking place. With the first day already cancelled I made way down to Simon's Town harbour at 6am. To be honest, although it was calm in the harbour the mist was heavy and the weather looked tentative to put it mildly. But at 6:45 we were briefed and the Zest II arrived and we looked all set to go - heading for Cape Point and then due south!

I recall chatting with some of our guides and they said that the success of these trips depended on finding trawlers in the area that attract sea birds - well, you can imagine my excitement when the first fishing trawler was spotted - and wow, nothing could have prepared me for the scene of birds flocking in incredible numbers around the vessel:

And on the water, it was a feeding frenzy as they went after fish that had escaped the nets of lines of the fishing vessels we pulled up to:

I had never seen an Albatross in real life before so seeing four different species on the day was a huge highlight for me:

Shy Albatross:

Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross:

Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross:

Black-browed Albatross:

New birds for me came at a furious pace - I could barely keep up as I would spot a new bird (as the guides pointed them out), view them through my binocs, mark the sighting on g-bird on my iPhone, then take some photos (with a boat that was rocking and rolling in the swells and the wind it was no exactly east), and then record the photo numbers next to the species so that I could correctly label the pics after the trip. Anyway, here are some other new species that I recorded apart from the huge Albatrosses!

Subantarctic Skua:

White-chinned Petrel:

Pintado Petrel:

Northern Giant-Petrel:

Great Shearwater:

Sooty Shearwater:

Parasitic Jaeger:

European Storm-Petrel:

Wilson's Storm-Petrel:

Sabine's Gull:

Arctic Tern:

And of course, along the way there were some more common sea birds that I have seen before:

Another highlight was seeing the many Cormorant colonies on any rocks that were available around the shoreline:

We also saw Cape Fur Seal, Dolphins, Bryders Whale and Humped-back Whale. A new concept for me was the idea of a whale footprint - the impression left on the surface due to the movement of the whale under the water.

A highlight on the way back (apart from not feeling sea sick on the whole journey) was watching Cape Point appear (it took about 2 and a half hours to get back - I believe we had gone 50 miles south). Here are some shots from an angle that I had never seen Cape Point before:

An incredible day that I celebrated by eating fish and chips at the harbour before heading home to start processing the thousands of photos that I have taken. It would have been nice if the sun was out on the day as most of these photos look like they are greyscale due to the lack of sun and misty conditions on the day. I doubt that this will be the last Pelagic trip that I take!!!

If you are interested in joining one of these Pelagic outings, you can contact Trevor Hardaker via Zest For Birds.