National Marine Sanctuary Foundation

It's another for the Birds Supporting Birds partnership with the , and these birds have some 2026 record breaking stats to share!

🏈Phil had a homefield advantage and stayed in waters east of South Carolina, moving a bit more inshore where he seems to have found an area to forage. Prior to this year, we have only ever had one bird go south of Cape Hatteras, NC. In 2024, a great shearwater spent a week along the shelf break between Hatteras and the South Carolina border. This would make Phil the farthest south along the eastern seaboard that one of our birds has traveled if it weren't for his own teammate, 🥖Hoagie...

🥖Hoagie decided to break the 2026 record to visit Florida and the Bahamas. He headed southwest on the tailwinds until he was 55 miles (88km) east of Daytona Beach. He slowed down and kept heading south until he was just 22 miles (36km) off the coast of West Grand Bahama, which is a first for our tagged birds and not something that any of us expected! Hoagie then turned back north and spent a day foraging off of West Palm Beach, FL, and is now off the coast of Fort Pierce, FL.

🔔Liberty continued riding the winds of the nor'easter south before stopping to forage in the deep water off the shelf east of Maryland. She headed back north to the Nantucket Shoals the following day, but didn't stay long before moving up Georges Bank, through Franklin and Rodgers Basins, and is now at Cashes Ledge. This appears to be the track of a bird on the move, looking for the most productive feeding grounds.

🦅Franklin moved west and stayed in New York Bight through the rest of the storm. He started moving east and passed over the Nantucket Shoals without stopping. He started to forage in the Great South Channel and then moved onto Georges Bank where he's been for the last three days.

Franklin and Liberty traveled about twice as far as Hoagie and Phil this week (~3200km vs ~1500km). Franklin remains our overall distance leader with over 21,000km (13,000mi) tracked.

🗺: Liam Waters/NOAA

It's another and while the Philadelphia Eagles 🦅 travelled north to Chicago over the weekend, the great shearwaters from the Birds Supporting Birds partnership have started to head south.🧭

Last week we experienced a nor’easter moving along the Atlantic coast of the United States, bringing with it strong winds 🍃 and high seas🌊. Despite all of our birds being in different places, they had similar overall movements as they responded to the wind.

Similar to a quarterback scramble🏈, Phil took the least direct route to the end zone by making large zig-zags on his flight🔀. He left the Nantucket Shoals and started heading northwest rather than south, as the 20 knot north winds reached him. It's impossible to know what might have driven these zig-zags, but one possibility could have been attempts to seek out calmer conditions. Phil is now along the shelf break off of South Carolina about 150 miles south of Hoagie.

🦅Franklin moved from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and started to head south before shuffling to the continental shelf off of Sable Island, Nova Scotia. He kept moving southwest on 15-20 knot northerly winds until finally touching down in the southern Nantucket Shoals. With strong 27 knot winds and 14 foot seas, it appears Franklin decided to take a time-out and spend some time foraging.🐟

🔔Liberty started her week near southern Nova Scotia, about 750 miles to the southwest of Franklin. She headed south and followed a similar pattern of not stopping to forage until reaching the Nantucket Shoals. She moved a little further inshore towards Martha’s Vineyard before turning around to head offshore again and is now only about 60 miles south-west of Franklin!

🥪Hoagie started the week far offshore, about 200 miles east of Ocean City, Maryland, and has started moving south. As the storm front started to move through with northerly winds, he moved from deep water off the continental shelf and headed southwest towards the shelf break. Hoagie followed the shelf break south past the Outer Banks and is now about 70 miles off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Keep tuning in as NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provides updated maps and analyzes these birds movements. Score an extra point by flying to the link in our bio and learning more about this incredible partnership! 🥇

📸tagged shearwater: NOAA
🗺️ tagged shearwaters, week 10. Credit: Liam Waters/NOAA

Want a chance to see the Foundation's award winning film Neah Bay: Restoring Ancestral Waters?

The film, showcasing the cleanup of 3,700 tons of large marine debris in Neah Bay, WA in partnership with the Makah Tribe and NOAA Marine Debris, will be showing at the eighth annual River and Ocean Film Festival at the Rainforest Arts Center in Forks, Washington.

Event details at https://ow.ly/FNpy50ZRu5i

On Monday a group of 20 volunteers crossed the Santa Barbara Channel and embarked on a day of trash cleanup from the remote shores of the Channel Islands. The result, 470 total pounds of trash and marine debris removed from the rocky beaches of Chinese Harbor on Santa Cruz and Driftwood Cove on Anacapa islands. ⁠
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Representatives from local organizations Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, Island Packers, Santa Barbara Adventure Company, and Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara as well as members of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program worked alongside volunteers to remove trash and marine debris from the rocky island beaches.

Mylar balloons, styrofoam, plastic bags, and other trash had been washed by ocean currents from the California coast all the way to the delicate ecosystems that inhabit the islands and their waters, including habitat for endangered species like the giant sea bass and black abalone. ⁠
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Read more: https://www.independent.com/2026/09/25/nearly-500-pounds-of-trash-collected-from-santa-cruz-and-anacapa-islands/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Environment&utm_content=Channel-Islands-Trash&utm_gen=utmdc

📸: Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

BIG NEWS!

The first-ever recorded natural nesting for any sea turtle species on the U.S. West Coast. recently happened in Southern California! A research biologist with the Southwest Fisheries Science Center’s Marine Mammal and Turtle Division has identified the turtles as two olive ridley sea turtles that nested on Huntington and Seal Beach.

In the Pacific Ocean, olive ridleys are most commonly known to nest in Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. They are sometimes seen in Southern California, but have never been documented to nest anywhere in the United States!

Read the article featuring Foundation scientist, Dr. Lindsey Peavey Reeves, discussing this interesting event. The article from Los Angeles Times can be found here: https://ow.ly/GP1j50ZRq8A

The National Marine Sanctuary Foundation’s work aids in the conservation, restoration, and protection of iconic species in our ocean, coastlines, and Great Lakes. Learning more about the shifting movements of species, helps researchers understand more about our public waters.

Photos by NOAA Fisheries West Coast, NOAA, and Bob Yerena/NOAA