Hi all --

I think the difference may have been the timing of the ship's course, or it
could have simply been differences in weather or wind from one week to the
next. The ship we took left Baltimore in the afternoon but arrived in
Bermuda later in the day than Gene's did, so may have had more time at sea.
Having said that, most of the activity was in a relatively short period of
time both coming and going, and would have been easy to miss.

Probably the biggest factor for the differences between the two trips was
that we were in the western portion of the Gulf Stream during daylight hours
(early morning) whereas Gene crossed this at night. The about one hour
either side of the Gulf Stream's western edge was critical for us. Had we
passed through this area at night we would have seen no Black-capped or
Leach's Petrels or Cory's or Audubon's Shearwaters.

While the Gulf Stream held birds, the Sargasso Sea itself was a biological
desert. Except for migration, when apparently lots of shearwaters and
jaegers pass by Bermuda, it is pretty devoid of birds, although we had about
10 Tropicbirds, several coming right in to the ship, on the day  we
approached the islands.

The week Gene did his cruise was one where birders off Hatteras had good
species, good numbers and high diversity, while during our week their
diversity was relatively low and they had no rare pterodromas. Based on
this, we would have predicted that the previous week (that is, the week Gene
went) to have been better than ours, but it was not. Go figure!

Barry and I have, as many of you know, done commercial ship cruising all
over the world for seabirds, often with wonderful results so the idea is
sound. However these are what marine scientists call "ships of opportunity"
and you have no control over their route. Timing is thus very critical, both
the dates traveled and also, when the ship reaches certain points on the
cruise track. Birding in tropical waters can be very slow and very spotty,
as we have found out on several trips to the western Pacific -- also noted
by Barry's brother who was on the Western Pacific Odyssey, a designated
birding cruise -- if your ship isn't in the right place at the right time,
you dip out.

It might be worthwhile for Maryland birders to explore other Port of
Baltimore cruises, such as those to the Bahamas or the ones up to New
England. We were quite interested to learn from Jeremy Madieros, who
spearheads the Bermuda Petrel recovery program, that tracking of birds
feeding young found that most flew north to productive waters east of Cape
Cod, and even further north (one went to the Gulf of St. Lawrence!), rather
than west to the Gulf Stream. Maybe Baltimore to Bermuda is not the best
option for sea-birding. Or maybe different dates would be more productive,
particularly in autumn.

Anyway, it was an interesting experiment...

Best,
Gail Mackiernan and Barry Cooper
Colesville, MD





on 06/22/2009 11:36 PM, Eugene J. Scarpulla at  wrote:

> Gail and Barry saw 10 pelagic species on their Baltimore-Bermuda-Baltimore
> cruise.
> __________________
> 
> And now another side of the Baltimore-Bermuda-Baltimore cruise story ---
> 
> Marcia Watson and I attempted a 5-night roundtrip Baltimore to Bermuda
> cruise that started on May 21, 2006 aboard the Royal Caribbean Grandeur of
> the Sea.  We also had high hopes of seeing pelagic species.
><snip>