Wild Tobago

  Faraaz Abdool puts the spotlight on the bird whose habitat is the mid-Atlantic and breeding ground the rocky islands off Tobago’s north.   The Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic is unique among all other seas as all its boundaries are oceanic. While the body of water itself was named after the ubiquitous sargassum seaweed found within it, there is a small, cryptic seabird that now carries this name: the Sargasso Shearwater. Its scientific name – Puffinus lherminieri - is in honour of the Guadeloupe-based French naturalist Félix Louis L’Herminier, who, with his son in his later years, spent considerable time studying the flora and fauna of the Caribbean.   An adult Sargasso Shearwater makes its way to its burrow. Photo by Faraaz Abdool Sargasso Shearwaters are pelagic birds, meaning that they are superbly adapted to life on the ocean. They are from the order of birds colloquially known as “tubenoses” which comprises four families of ocean wanderers: shearwaters, alba...