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2045 Thursday, August 24, 2023
The morning dawned still and foggy as we left Trinity Harbour for the run across Trinity Bay, through Baccalieu Tickle and into Bay de Verde at the entrance to Conception Bay. Halfway across Trinity Bay, miles from land, we happened to spot a lone white beaked dolphin! I have seen a lot of different species of whales and dolphins in years of sailing. I am always excited when I get to add a new one to the list. White beaked dolphins like colder waters and are one of the larger dolphins, up to 10 feet and weighing 750 pounds. They have white streaks down either side starting at the blowhole, and a small whitish saddle just behind the dorsal fin, along with quite large, curved dorsal fins. Very cool sighting for Annie and I.
From there we made for Baccalieu Tickle formed by the headland between Trinity and Conception Bays and the offshore island of Baccalieu. Baccalieu Island is an astonishing seabird colony composed of Leach's Storm Petrels, Puffins, Murres, Kittiwakes, Gannets, Razorbills, Herring Gulls, Black Guillemits, Northern Fulmara and Great Black Backed Gulls. Today it was all about the puffins!
As we began approaching the island, groups of Puffins could be seen flying in large groups from offshore to the island. It seemed that every few minutes, hundreds would pass us, many carrying small fish in their beak to feed their chick back in the burrow. At times, the sky was filled with them! I have included three puffin photos, two from today, one from a previous day in the Tickle.
Around 50,000 breeding pairs of puffins nest on Baccalieu. They are monogamous and tend to stick with one mate. They may live for 20 to 25 years. They can fly close to 50 miles per hour and beat their wings as fast as 5 to 7 beats per second! The place they really fly is underwater, flapping their wings and steering with their bright red/orange feet. It is only in breeding season that their bills take on the orange and blue colors as a sign of health for breeding. Amazingly, these tiny birds, come September, will head out into the storm tossed waters of the Atlantic for the winter, returning to their same burrow the next May.
After Baccalieu Tickle and the puffins we headed into Bay de Verde for the night. On the way we passed one of the many fishing boats that work out of this port. Since the collapse of the cod fishery, snow crab has been the primary fishery. Back in the 1960s and 1970s when I first came to Newfoundland, they caught cod here from a large fleet of small trap skiffs. Now, big boats are used and a modern, massive, blue fish plant processes 24 million pounds of snow crab each year. That is a lot of crab and it is the biggest plant in the province.
We felt very l wasn't listening early enough when the cod started to decline.
Photos and a little more text at the bottom.
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