Hi,

It will take me ages to put together a web-based trip report for last weekend. Here is a brief report instead.

On the Saturday, we cruised out east off Eden towards feeding humpbacks. This was to be a theme of the weekend. Every humpback group we encountered was feeding and from shore one could see about 8-10 pods along an obvious front running perpendicular to shore. Remarkably, there were very few seabirds around. Mainly a few wedge-tailed shearwaters and occasional small parties of short-tailed shearwaters on migration. Australasian Gannets were unusually abundant even in the further offshore areas, which is unusual and symptomatic of the amount of baitfish in the water. In the afternoon, close to Boyds Tower, we came across a large number with other seabirds and a humpback whale feeding on surface krill. We failed to see any common dolphins at all at sea, although there was a small pod off the northern headland viewable from the apartment balcony in the morning. Water temperature in Twofold Bay and the coast was about 16 degrees, rising to about 17 degrees offshore. This was consistent with an apparent upwelling caused by a branch of the East Australian Current moving offshore at Eden.

With the exception of the sighting of an indopacific humpback dolphin (yahoogroups passim) from shore in the morning, Sunday was much the same with reduced numbers of seabirds but the line of Humpbacks was further south. We headed out towards Green Cape with an intention to get to the shelf break where a second front was visible on Sunday. This proved useful as no sooner did we stumble across the front  - and large numbers of Shy Albatross (probably mostly white-capped, steadi) and great-winged petrels, we picked up a small pod of killer whales. Whilst observing these animals, we picked up various other individuals at distances around the boat and surmised that they were searching for food. Then, with apparent ease, they found and took a large sunfish right next to the boat. What ensued was them killing it deeper underwater than we could see. Parts of the sunfish rose to the surface first then the remaining top portion of skin, the skin having apparently been excised out by the killers. According to Ingrid Visser, the skin on sunfish may be toxic, and could explain this behaviour. Within the few minutes this took to occur, several Gibsons albatross and a providence petrel appeared on the scene. The trip back to shore yielded more encountered with feeding humpbacks.

I've placed a few images of the trip's humpbacks on the web for anyone who is interested at http://www.ecology-solutions.com.au/marine_mammals.htm.

Regards,

Simon Mustoe.