I haven’t seen a sea snake all day and the water has taken on that rich brilliant blue color characteristic of the tropics… we’re getting deeper. As far as I can tell we continued our northerly course all of last night and today. The swell is still only a few meters and the wind a steady 15 knots, classic beauford 3-4 trade wind conditions. Still plenty of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters scouring the wave crests, and a new seabird species for my life list. Hovering overhead was a dark ominous looking bird with a forked tail and long beak, the ultimate parasitic bird of the tropics, a frigatebird. These birds cannot land on the water and will harass gulls and terns until they forfeit their hard earned catch. After consulting the bird book, it was a Lesser Frigatebird (Fregata ariel), which nests on islands offshore of northern Australia, in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This is the third species of frigatebird I’ve seen; Magnificent in the Sea of Cortez, Greater in Kauia and Costa Rica, and now the Lesser here in the Indian Ocean.
There have been quite a few pelagic drifters in the form of Siphonophores (similar to jellies only in that they are “jelly like” but in a different phyla and morphologically distinct). I even spotted a coconut bobbing alongside the ship, arguably the world’s first true open ocean explorer. Unfortunately not all the drifters were naturally occurring. I saw more plastic trash than living organism floating at the surface during my post on the bow, all small enough to be devoured by the shearwaters scanning these offshore feeding grounds for a meal. The open ocean may as well be a back alley in some major metropolis slum town. It’s easy to neglect when no one’s watching.
Photos: Magnificent Frigatebird taken in Bahia de los Angeles, Wedge-tailed Sheawater taken today.
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