Atlantic Crossing 2. Birds, Fish and Dolphins

This blog follows on from Part 1. https://kiwiflyingfish.com/2022/02/atlantic-crossing-mindelo-cape-verde-islands-to-port-louis-grenada-1/ and talks about the fish, bird, and planktonic life during the Atlantic crossing.

GOES Project

The GOES project is about gathering planktonic and plastic data on the deep sea areas of the world’s oceans. https://www.goesfoundation.com/citizen-science-project/ . Many of the yachts in the crossing took regular GOES project samples at midday and midnight and then analyzed these about 4-6 hours later.

The sample is checked 3-4 hours after being taken. Then the analysis may take from 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on the observer. Mark decided that the holes in the filter should be marked to keep track of the photos. But the ink he used leaked all over the slide which was not good when you are looking for black spots on the filter from out of the ocean. Instead, you got ink residue as well.

All the participants in the project obn the various boats have been finding lots of black bits (unknown origin), plastic threads, and plastic pieces. Far too many plastic pieces to be good for the ocean. What we all agreed was that although the project is fascinating it is also frustrating as the microscopes do not quite give you the resolution you need to find all the copepods and other tiny sooplankton creatures.

Also zooplankton and phytoplankton. The most interesting being miniature shrimp-like creatures.

Since we had a microscope, Neville then transferred his attention to the Saragossa weed floating past and found miniature shrimps in that as well.

Fishing

In Las Palmas, Neville spent many hours with the other yachts advising on fishing lines and lures. He even took some of the yachties to the fishing shops to help them buy fishing equipment. For the first half of the trip, we caught nothing and several other yachts that Neville had helped were catching fish. Life was getting desperate for our fisherman!!. Pete caught the first fish of the trip on the second day but we threw it away because it was too small.

Then on the 6th day, we saw a Thresher shark trying to kill/stun Neville’s lure on the end of his rod that he also had behind the yacht. This was very funny but did not provide any fish to eat.

We had four hand lines out every day and sometimes also Neville’s rod. The crew suggested that he had too many lines out, but Neville was sure we were at the wrong speed – too fast or too slow!!

The fish we did see a lot of were flying fish. They often landed on the deck at night and Nev even tried to put some on the lines to see if he could attract any other fish!! That was right up until I wanted to take some photos then it was only the tiny fish and no large ones and they would not jump onto the deck!! Therefore we took a short video so I hope you can get the idea.

The lack of fish was getting desperate, more pressure was coming on for fresh fish and Nev started to lose interesting his lines. We were catching more sargossa weed than anything else. He then began fishing for shrimps out of the Saragossa seaweed!! Instead of cooked fish, we may be having shrimp cocktails!! See the shrimp above (under the GOES project photos)- he would have had to catch many many more!!

Finally, on day 8 he caught a mahimahi. This is a beautiful fish in the water and sad to see it die but it is also very good eating. Poisson Cru for lunch and fried fish with coriander corn fritters and mango salsa for dinner. We needed a change from pre-cooked meals and Neville learned a new recipe.

Dolphins and Whales

We have seen dolphins almost every second day, Atlantic common dolphin, Atlantic spotted dolphin, and the striped dolphin. Two very large pods and 3 small pods. Then two days out from Grenada we also saw four very small dolphins that we believe to be spinner dolphins. unfortunately they were not spinning – they just traveled past the yacht and did not stay. The second video is from a Gopro with a very wide angle so you can see the dolphins coming in from all sides. The video is not embedded,due to the length, just follow the link if you are interested.

Large Dolphin group on Gopro…….will be posted shortly

We also saw a pod of whales but fortunately or unfortunately they kept their distance. One of the other boats had hit a sleeping whale the day before luckily with no damage. The only shot I could get was of the water spout in the distance.

Birds

Tropicbird

Since day 7 we have also had visits from tropicbirds every morning and they are getting more regular. Day 8 -1, day 7-1, day 8 – 2, day 9 – 5, day 10 – 3. When there are two of them, they squawk at each other continuously. A lone one does not make any noise.  There are two varieties a red-billed tropicbird and a white-tailed tropicbird. They fly very fast and dive from great heights. One was definitely the red-billed tropicbird. The others may have been the white-tailed variety but identification is difficult. The tropicbirds move fast and the yacht is pitching ad rolling as well.

We bought an extra camera lens in Tenerife which has been excellent when you are on land. When the boat and the bird are moving it is often easier to use the mid-range lens for a quicker focus. we missed having a good identification book. Using internet ashore for identification is so easy that you forget there is none and sea and need downloaded books for identification oplates. A must for future passages.

Booby

On day 12 we awoke and the GPS was showing 450 miles to go to Grenada. Shortly after we saw the first Booby we had seen. Great to see a lovely soaring bird with all its pinions displayed.

The next day we saw three together we so thought we must definitely be getting closer to land.

We arrived into Grenada in the dark at 3am so did not see any of the bird life down the coast as we got closer.

After we had arrived we found that Grenada is full of birds and the ones I loved most were the minature humming bird. See post First week in Grenada. …….

Atlantic Crossing Part 3 Blog Exerts