Stellwagen Bank Pelagic

The sea was glassy calm, but not flat. It was as if some great beast was breathing gently and its torso rose and fell in slow undulations. It had been like this once before on the Stellwagen Bank whale watch.

I could picture in my mind that day, when the birds sat on the sea and the whales lolled lazily. Perhaps it would be like that again, so I stood at the rail, waiting for the island to rise on the horizon. Of course, it would not rise. It was beneath the waves, but you would know it was there.

We perched up front, almost oblivious to the patter of the naturalist from the marine coastal center. She was trying to keep nearly a hundred folks from going to sleep in the sultry sun, while the swaying vessel carried us over the empty depths. The only life here was a stray gull or tern, in fast transit between the islands of life.

We were going as fast as we could, engines pounding and wake roiling, but it was too slow. Finally, we saw a small dark flutter, far out on the surface. The wait was over and we all focused on this first sign, like Noah waiting for the dove to return. The flood waters were subsiding, and the land rose somewhere down there beneath us, closer and closer.

This was Stellwagen Bank off the coast of Massachusetts, where powerful ocean currents smashed against the rising floor and a great mixing of muck and water gave rise to nutrients. Here the chain of life began, and built up in stages through plankton and squid and fish to marvelous swimming mammals and airborne beings.

The first of these was a tiny petrel, all black with a bright white rump patch. The long wings fluttered and bore the bird unsteadily over the water. You would barely notice the brief hesitation as the head stooped to pick something from the surface. Occasionally it would seem to walk on the water, feet dangling and paddling.

The bird is hardly a rock upon which to build anything, but it was named for the disciple Peter, who dared not set his feet down on the water, lest he sink. Instead, like this bird, he dangled them just above the surface, until fear overcame him and he fell. The petrel will not sink, even though he flies like this above the water for hours on end.

These petrels were flying all around us now, and ahead on the water were larger seabirds, marking the very place the captain sought. The whales and the birds fed together. Suddenly one bird came out of the distance toward us, with ponderous beats and smooth glides. Our optics focused on it, speeding past on long, broad wings, set in a seemingly endless glide that kept it just above the surface. Was it an albatross? No, a close cousin; it was a shearwater.

If the wind blows, which it almost always does here on the open ocean, these birds can glide all day with scarcely a flap. They bank their wings and veer one way and then another in unceasing search. Then they earn their name, each wing like a stiff blade seeming to cut the tops of whitecaps. The best they dare do is shear the mist.

Now the wind was so light most of the birds waited on the water, reluctant to flee the plowing bow of the boat. Most of them were the greater shearwater, but there were quite a few sooty shearwaters too. They were here just to live in the North Atlantic summer, resting from the labors of parenting. These two species breed during our cold months on islands of the southern and eastern Atlantic Ocean.

When close birds finally decided to take off, they beat their great wings slowly and paddled across the surface on fast feet. They left a trail of little eddies in their wake on the smooth sea. We watched each new group of birds closely, picking out a few of the smaller manx shearwaters, and even two large Cory's shearwaters.

We do not see these birds very often or so well. It was another rare day to remember, when the ocean rested and granted gifts to those who ventured out upon her waves.