Brown Booby checking out our haul of dorado
Wandering the Pacific Ocean in search of fish and birds
If you think birders get up early in the morning, you haven’t met my sportfishing friend James. He chartered a wend for a handful of us to fish the waters off San Diego a couple of weeks back. We combine it with a night at a Mission Bay hotel where we grill up a succulent dinner and some doughnuts for a nice Dad getaway. But don’t stay up late at the hotel, considering James wants to be 30 miles out in the ocean when the sun rises. That ways setting our alarms for 3:30am so we could leave the dock at the ridiculous hour of 4:15am. It was dark, and nothing well-nigh this time of day deserves the modifier “in the morning.” Nautical twilight (first light) wasn’t until 5:45. The sun wouldn’t make its visitation whilom the horizon for scrutinizingly two and a half hours.
Predawn bioluminescent scum off Point Loma
The visionless wend ride out unliable us to see the bioluminescent scum in our wake, which was cool. It took until 20 minutes without sunrise for me to spot our first seabird – some Black-vented Shearwaters. But this wasn’t a birding trip. We had a destination, and we weren’t slowing for any birds. Virtually 7:15, the tutorage cut the engine. To me, it looked exactly like every other spot in every single direction for as far as you could see. But fishermen see things differently. We were near something tabbed the 302 spot, an zone well-nigh 25 miles or so off Point Loma where the seafloor rises quickly on the southwest whet of the San Diego trough. Within minutes, we were tossing our live sardine morsel into the water. And, in decided unrelatedness to all the fishing I’ve overly previously done, we were transmissible fish. Indeed, it was comically easy. It didn’t take longer than 10 seconds from the morsel hitting the water to have a 15-20 pound blue, green, yellow, and silver dorado on the hook. They are trappy fish who put up a respectable fight. The school stayed with the boat, so our killing spree lasted well-nigh 45 minutes. The wind was kicking up, and the waves were just on the whet of tolerable. Satisfied with our haul, we decided to throne when in.
After the fishing excitement, I well-matured on birdwatching. I’d once seen a few nice birds. A couple of Black Storm-Petrels hung virtually the wend while we were fishing, a tiny Least Storm-Petrel made a unenduring appearance, a Pomarine Jaeger cruised by, and a couple of Sabine’s Gulls wandered past. As we motored when to San Diego harbor, the ride became all well-nigh the boobies. First, an unidentified juvenile booby flew by scrutinizingly a hundred yards yonder from the boat. I had no endangerment to ID it in the field, but I got some crappy photos that showed a white collar and brown head. That narrows it lanugo to either a Masked or Nazca Booby. I’d never seen a Nazca Booby before. Relying on that sighting for a lifer wasn’t a happy thought, though. Thankfully, I’d get wondrous looks at a pair of Nazcas well-nigh an hour later.
A lifer Nazca Booby giving unconfined looks
Before we made it all the way in, we stopped at the Nine-mile Bank to fillet our dorado. Tossing the carcasses into the water instantly attracted a tuft of Western Gulls. As I scanned the gulls, a bigger, darker bird flew in. It had a archetype booby shape – long pointy wings, a pointy long snout in front, and a pointy tail in back. It had visionless brown wings, a visionless throne and chest unmistakably demarcated from a white belly. It was a Brown Booby. Brown Boobies live in tropical regions virtually the globe, and seems to be expanding northwards. Surpassing this year, I’d only seen them in Hawaii, but we saw several on the San Diego pelagic trip I took in August, and ended up seeing 4 individuals on this wend ride. Calmer seas closer to shore unliable for some decent shots of the curious bird.
Then, the money birds arrived. A pair of striking white-backed boobies appeared, with a wide, visionless slash withal the trailing whet of the wing. They were either Masked or Nazca Boobies. A few years ago, each would have been a pretty mega sighting in California waters. But with each passing year, increasingly are stuff spotted off California. Still, both are pretty rare. The difference between the two is snout color. For Masked, it is all yellow. On Nazca, the snout turns orange-ish pink at the base. Surpassing 2002, Nazcas, which mainly successors on the. Galapagos Islands, were considered a subspecies of Masked Booby. The pair I saw swooped virtually the gulls, and then one came over to the wend to explore. My photos were good unbearable to show the snout color, which was an orange-ish, pinkish verisimilitude at the base, indicating Nazca Booby. This pair of adults, and a couple of juveniles, has theoretically been hanging virtually these waters and the Coronado Islands off Tijuana all summer. I kept my fingers crossed for a Red-billed Tropicbird, but didn’t get so lucky.
At the end of the day, fishing just isn’t my jam. Getting up at 3:30am has days of after-effects. The six hours of wavy travel was a lot. The three-hour ride from the fishing spot to the dock was fine on the way when when I could squint for birds in the daylight, but the early ride in darkness was pretty tedious. That said, you can’t see the seabirds if you aren’t out to sea. So I fathom that my friend serried for us to be out on deep water. That we ended the day with a boatload of mahi mahi, which has proven succulent in the many forms we’ve eaten it in the last week, was an unusual bonus.
