I was obsessively watching the marine weather forecast in the week leading up to this past Saturday’s TX Pelagic from South Padre Island and NOAA had been consistently forecasting 2 to 4 foot seas for Thursday through Saturday. A frontal system in West Texas wouldn’t be reaching the Gulf Coast until early next week, but by Wednesday the winds and seas started increasing from 1 foot to 4+ feet ahead of the front. So on Friday as I (and everyone else) was preparing to leave for the 400 mile drive to S. Padre Island I was happily surprised to see that Friday morning’s 4:00 AM marine forecast for Saturday was revised and now predicted seas of 2 feet or less! Someone on the night shift at NOAA thought the front had stalled to the west. Well that marine weather forecast turned out to be a “False Alarm”. On Saturday at 4:30 AM as 47 seabirders gathered at the Osprey dock we were looking at seas that would start out in the 4 foot + range. Anything over 5 feet and we usually wouldn’t run trips. It was forecast to calm down by midday however so we went ahead. Similar to the last trip from Port Aransas for about one third of the participants this would be their first Pelagic experience, I always hope they aren’t disappointed. Seabird activity started early soon after sunrise with 4 Magnificent Frigatebirds and a Parasitic Jaeger at the first and only shrimp boat we visited on the way out. The morning’s activity continued with a lone Cory’s Shearwater and then a Masked Booby that circled the boat a few times to see if we were at all interesting giving everyone great views and photo ops. A few singles and a pair of Audubon’s Shearwaters gave decent views. A Brown Booby came in to investigate us allowing...
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