Back home on dry land now doing a bit of data checking and sorting through photos. Thought you might be interested in some of the totals we recorded on the survey:
Cetaceans:
Common Dolphin
Bottlenose Dolphin 15
Common Dolphin 1767 (not very good for number of days at sea)
Fin Whale 1 + 3 probables
Grey Seal 1
Harbour Porpoise 30
Minke Whale 3
Risso's Dolphin 8
Tuna sp. 118
White-beaked dolphin 6
Blue-fin Tuna
Seabirds (inc. landbirds recorded while on transect):
Gannet
Arctic Skua 7 (poor year)
Auk sp. 1081
Balearic Shearwater 177 (54 on transect, 123 off transect)
Black-headed Gull 3
Brent Goose 12
Chaffinch 14
Common Gull 36
Common Scoter 49
Cormorant 2
Fieldfare 2
Fulmar 329 (very good year for them)
Gannet 7492 (despite extra days lower than best years)
Great Black-backed Gull 730 (very good year)
Great Northern Diver 2
Great Shearwater 99
Great Skua 183
Grey Heron 2
Guillemot 2643 (total helped by transects in Cardigan Bay)
Herring Gull 305
House Martin 10
Kittiwake 3677 (very good year - aided by Cardigan Bay transects)
Larus sp. 80
Lesser Black-backed Gull 482 (very good year - most birds seen on one day)
Little Gull 82 (excellent year)
Long-tailed Duck 1
Manx Shearwater 222
Meadow Pipit 28
Mediterranean Gull 66 (good year)
Peregrine 1
Petrel sp. 6
Pied Wagtail 5
Puffin 48
Purple Sandpiper 1
Razorbill 1304 (very good year aided by Cardigan Bay transects)
Robin 2
Sandwich Tern 5
Shag 4
Shoveler 3
Skua sp. 2
Song Thrush 8
Sooty Shearwater 196 (very good year)
Starling 45
Storm Petrel 184
Swallow 2
Yellow-legged Gull 2
Fulmar
There were very few landbirds on board the ship this year, likely due to the persistent, strong, westerly winds. Though the ones we did see were pretty good:
Long-eared Owl
Red-breasted Flycatcher
Snow Bunting
Black Redstart
Blackcap
Chiffchaff
Goldcrest
Song Thrush
Redwing
Storm Petrel
Overall a very enjoyable survey again and despite all the iffy weather there were still a few memorable skyscapes.
Peter Howlett & Morgan Schofield
Snow Bunting (Jeroen van der Kooij) and Long-eared Owl (Peter Howlett)
Balearic Shearwater
Kittiwake
Black Redstart and Red-breasted Flycatcher
All photos copyrighted to Peter Howlett/MARINElife unless otherwise stated
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