[DAY 14] Sea birds are not camera shy!

Overnight and this morning we sailed to the last of the two points we have to investigate in Murphy (this particular eddie). 

I started swimming with Adam and Drew in the dinghy. Today our first close encounter with wildlife was a bird, a booby. He mad a couple of turns above our heads and decided to land on the swim pole. He stayed there long enough so that we had just enough time to get the camera out and take few pictures. He was fighting to keep his balance as the pole was plunging in and out of the water, then after about 30 seconds he took off. He made a second attempt at landing on the pole but missed it by few inches and took off right before completely landing in the water.

The next hour we found a small fishing net with its usual ecosystem around it. Adam and Drew spotted very few plastic debris until the last hour.

They stopped the dinghy to get my attention on an albatross that has been following us for awhile and just landed few feet away from me. He took off again, made a big loop, landed closer and paddled toward me to stop at about 2 to 3 feet away. He wasn’t camera shy and let me video tape him from under and above the surface before he finally left.

Adam and Drew told me the albatross had been on a net about 50 meters in front of us.

I swam to it, it was even bigger than the net we attached the 4Ocean drifter on. We lashed the dinghy to it and the three of us were in the water admiring the amazing colony of different type of fish under it. There were wahoo and mahi-mahi with the usual reef fish.

Drew dove 10 to 15 meters deep and saw below him another layer of fish. Who knows what is under after what he saw, maybe bigger pelagic predators that conveniently have to go up few meters to find their meal?

27°50 N / 153°55 W

Ben

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Photo credits @joshmunoz, @sea.marshall