Monday, April 2, 2018, Cruising the Laccadive Sea

The warm waters of the Laccadive Sea stretch between the island-nations of Sri Lanka and the Maldives at the tip of India’s southern point.  Long a gateway for explorers from the Indian Ocean to the Bay of Bengal, the sea’s shallow waters, particularly in the Gulf of Mannar, have been known for their pearl banks for 2,000 years, praised by Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder for their prolific harvest.  Today, it remains a popular region for pearl fishing.  One of the richest marine environments in the world also thrives here, harboring some 3,600 species of flora and fauna.  Large swaths of its waters, islands, and coasts are protected as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

Epic Journeys of Sea Birds

The overwater migration of seabirds has been recorded since the days of ancient Greece.  In modern times, ornithologists have identified particular species and their routes and found that some travel thousands of miles over water between breeding and wintering sites, crossing the equator on long north-south routes.  Others like the albatross – the largest of seabirds – even circumnavigate the earth on a constant east-west flight.  Remarkably, seabirds seem to rely on some of the same “tools” used by ancient seafarers:  Celestial hints from the sun and stars, the magnetic pull of the earth, and mental maps that incorporate physical landmarks.

Highly adapted to marine life, seabirds might spend many months flying over water.  As such, they have evolved into highly efficient flyers, soaring between differing air masses to gain velocity or riding prevailing trade winds to gain distance with little effort.  They survive their long migrations by feeding on krill or fish that linger on the ocean’s surface, by diving as much as 100 feet below water to catch squid, or by foraging for food on the coast.

The Arctic Tern boasts one of the longest migratory routes of any bird, flying between the Arctic and the Antarctic each year.  However, few birds cover the mileage of the Sooty Shearwater.  It also flies between the Polar Regions, but during the summer, they follow the warm weather, flying quite remarkably some 40,000 miles in a year from New Zealand to Japan, then over to Alaska and California.