Dermot Breen's Blog: Coral Princess 4th January 2020

Thursday, 23 April 2020

Coral Princess 4th January 2020

Hard to believe today was our last full day on the Coral Princess. Amazing how a fortnight can fly by. The day to day experience on the ship was great although I probably didn't partake in 90% of the facilities being too busy out on deck birding. On the last two evenings I decided to skip our usual dinner arrangements in the Bordeaux restaurant as I noticed there was a bit of an increase in the bird activity in recent evenings and honestly didn't want to miss a minute as I knew time was rapidly running out. A visit to the Horizon Court buffet after sunset was a lot more straightforward rather than a three-course meal which could take up to 90 minutes while it was still bright out.

The big subsequent news from the Coral Princess was the fact that it got caught up in the current Covid-19 pandemic like most other cruise ships. While undertaking the same tour in reverse this whole thing kicked off. They eventually managed to finally dock in Florida after nearly a month of being turned away from every port between the Falkland Island to Florida. At least two people died onboard where this was going on with passengers confined to cabins for long periods. Sounds like the cruise from hell. It's times like these you have to apreciate how lucky we were on our trip.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coral-princess-cruise-ship-docked-in-miami-with-coronavirus-cases-2020-4?r=US&IR=T#any-passengers-or-crew-who-are-sick-with-respiratory-symptoms-are-required-to-stay-aboard-until-cleared-by-doctors-16

So back to the birds. Yet again today like nearly every day at sea, we had a unique makeup of species. I had my first and only Grey Phalarope, Arctic Akua, Franklin's Gull and De Filippi's Petrel of the trip. The Arctic Terns were easy enough to separate from the previously encountered and extremely similar, South American and Antarctic Terns due to the fact that they were in full winter plumage as opposed to the full breeding plumage of the other species. Again, the Salvin's Albatross kept their distance living up to their alternative name Shy Albatross before being split into three species. We had also hoped for the outside chance of Chatham's Albatross but given the distant views and relatively low numbers we weren't lucky. All in all it was a superb trip for seabirds which we all thoroughly enjoyed. In all during the cruise I personally had five Skua species, four Gull species, three Tern species, six Penguin species (we would get Humbolt later in the land-based trip), eleven Albatross species, four Austral Storm Petrels, 17 Petrels, six Shearwaters and two Diving-Petrels. Not a bad haul with 40 tubenose species alone.

I would have been keen to do another cruise trip at some stage as there is no long days on rough tracks, packing up and moving to a different hotel every day or two and the excellent facilities with English speaking staff. However after all of the recent developments I'm not at all sure now!

Species	Day Count
Grey Phalarope	106
Arctic Skua	1
Franklin's Gull	24
Kelp Gull	3
Arctic Tern	42
Salvin's Albatross	28
Black-browed Albatross	46
Southern/Northern Royal Albatross	51
Southern Royal Albatross	9
Northern Royal Albatross	22
Northern/Southern Giant Petrel	1
Wilson's Storm Petrel	2
Northern Giant Petrel	1
Southern Giant Petrel	1
Juan Fernandez Petrel	13
De Filippi's Petrel	2
Stejneger's Petrel	1
White-chinned Petrel	21
Procellaria sp.	63
Pink-footed Shearwater	670
Sooty Shearwater	29