In the coming years, gannets zipping along the Eastern Seaboard will encounter unprecedented obstacles. They can cover vast distances quickly, and often must, to keep up with the schools of menhaden and other forage fish they pursue. The species spans the North Atlantic here in North America, gannets breed in six colonies in southern Canada and overwinter at sea from New England to the Gulf of Mexico. Northern Gannets are built for speed, frequently flying and diving faster than 60 miles an hour. (Bottom) Northern Gannets along with a variety of other seabirds including pelicans and gulls, fly around a fishing vessel looking for food off the coast of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. (Top) Emerald, nutrient-rich water, cooled by the Labrador Current flowing south from the Arctic runs adjacent to the midnight blue of the Gulf Stream, the warm, swift current that originates off the tip of Florida. “They don’t think anything about picking up and moving from one state to another in a single day.” “That’s the thing about gannets,” said Patteson, shaking his head. Then, as quickly as they arrived, the enormous birds disappeared. Soon a cloud of more than a thousand of the six-foot-wide seabirds amassed around us, shrieking as they whizzed through the air and rained down upon the ocean at dizzying speeds. The gannets’ vocalization reached a fever pitch, alerting their kin in the area. The gannets, meanwhile, hovered 30 or 40 feet overhead, occasionally making their trademark daring dive: hurtling toward the water, then tucking their wings in just above the surface as if they were feathers on the shaft of an arrow. Pelicans and gulls scrummed near two shrimp boats, which puttered along churning up fish. Hundreds of Northern Gannets jostled for space among 3,000 seabirds. What brought us here was the spectacle off our starboard side. Below them circled 20 or so hammerhead sharks. As we coasted to a corkscrewing bob above the swells, loggerhead turtles floated by, their heart-shaped shells rolling in the current.
This boundary is ever shifting off the Outer Banks-sometimes as close as a few miles from the coast, other times as far as 20. On one side, emerald, nutrient-rich water cooled by the Labrador Current flowing south from the Arctic on the other, the midnight blue of the Gulf Stream, the warm, swift current that originates off the tip of Florida. By mid-morning I could see a stark delineation in the water off our bow. He was taking me out to find a transient spot along the continental shelf where Northern Gannets gather. Its captain, Brian Patteson, is widely considered the godfather of pelagic birds along the Atlantic Seaboard. The Stormy Petrel II, a 60-foot fishing and seabird touring boat, steamed away from North Carolina’s Outer Banks on a recent winter morning.