Another gorgeous morning today. We’re in outer Gulf of Tehuantepec off southern Mexico, headed offshore again after our zig-zag. This course is intended to bring us squarely within the core Eastern Tropical Pacific region for the duration.
When we turned seaward we were just 15 miles from the coast, but haze blocked any sight of land. Nonetheless, migrating land birds made themselves quite evident. Had a Parula Warbler, yellow-breasted chat, tropical kingbird, barn swallow, and probable Connecticut warbler land aboard. A merlin went by.
Lots of turtles here. We put a satellite transmitter on one. At one point from the flying bridge I mistook a coconut for a turtle and called it; that was embarrassing! But I had my 8-power binoculars and the other people were on the 25-power giant “big-eyes”. That was my excuse.
Small manta this morning and great looks at bow-riding coastal spotted dolphins including a baby with mother. We had a total of 17 encounters with mammals, of which 12 were bottlenose and most of the rest coastal spotted dolphins, unidentified dolphins, and a Bryde’s whale.
Dinner was served picnic-style on the back deck; grilled tuna and chicken.
By sundown we were 100 miles offshore, but the water was still relatively greenish. After dark we set up the lights again to dip-net using fine-mesh nets about a yard across, on 20 foot handles. I must be getting my sea legs pretty good, because without feeling much motion I suddenly noticed the stars overhead were waving back and forth. Why do the stars rock back and forth in the ocean sky? Bob’s response: they’re rock stars! To our floodlight halo came e a lot of foot-long juvenile Humboldt squid and swarms of frigate mackerel eating all kinds of little fishes drawn to the lights. Yesterday at sunset we saw big schools of probable frigate mackerel on the surface. How much these schools must eat!; how much everything out here must eat!! The many juvenile fish that we dip-netted included juvenile triggerfish, goatfish (oddly enough), baby mahimahi, flyingfish, jacks, needlefish—and a sailfish less than an inch long. (see photo)

Two mixed groups of spotted/spinner dolphins came to bowride today. This sparked an interesting debate about why. In the core area these are the dolphins who are set on by the tuna boats and the ones we’ve seen running hard away from the boat. From the bow of the ship, Pitman and the crossbow guys got several biopsies from several of each species. So, why? Possibly it’s because we’re approaching the continental shelf again, and we’re nearing the Gulf of Tehuantepec where strong winds preclude purse seine netting, so the dolphins might be naïve to boats. And Pitman reminded us that we’re headed landward, and in many parts of the world coastal dolphins bow-ride. But the spotteds in this group were the offshore type, with finer spotting. So they should not like boats. Yet they were bowriding, and doing it a long while, more than half an hour. Joao the former tuna fisherman offered another possibility. The tuna fisherman know of dolphins they call “untouchables.” They’ve apparently learned that boats mean getting chased and rounded up and having a net wrapped around them, and all that ensues. But they’ve figured out—so the tuna-men say—that they can avoid all that by sticking to the hull of the ship. If they stay right with the ship, the ship can’t set its net around them. Interesting.

Sunset was unusually brilliant and everyone on the flying bridge wanted to watch it. But the ship was sliding past the setting sun. No one had the nerve to ask the helm to turn and stop the ship just so we could watch the sun go down. So one of the biologists picked up the radio and called the helm room, saying, “Carl Safina requests that the ship come 90 left so he can watch the sunset.” And it did. It was amusing but also embarrassing. In the morning I went to the ship’s Captain and said that I had not in fact requested that the ship turn and stop. He said, “I wasn’t on helm at sunset, but I heard about it.”

Gorgeous morning. Lisa says humorously, “This sea is Beaufort 1, and it’s threatening Beaufort 0.” Dolphins are visible from miles away, and we’re doubtless seeing more because it’s so calm. It’s a flyingfish sea, complete with occasional manta rays and several sailfish jumping repeatedly for no easily apparent reason. I figure the motive for their leaping is either sheer joy or parasites, but it could be something in between. We’ve seen more Tahiti Petrels, Galapagos, Markham’s and Leach’s Storm Petrels, and a cattle egret has landed on our ship and is trying to eat the fish in the outdoor fish tank. Olive Ridley turtles were numerous on the calm sea, including one brought aboard with a fish hook in its mouth. It was a large longline circle-hook, a design used more and more because it hooks fewer turtles. The turtle had been cut free and was trailing a few feet of line. The crew removed the hook. Because the weather was so slick, I decided to go into the small boat and help catch some of the many turtles we were seeing. I left my camera bag out on the bridge after looking around and assuring myself there was no chance of rain in the next hour. Lisa said she’d bring it in if rain arrived. I was in the boat five minutes—enough for Pitman to catch a turtle—when the sky darkened to a purple bruise and we began to get hit with gusts of cold air. We sped back to the ship as—over a period of one minute—the anemometer registered wind going from 3 knots to 36 knots as rain and wind enveloped us.

Sleeping is difficult as one is constantly rolled back and forth.