Proceedings of 

 the United States 

 National Museum 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION • WASHINGTON, D.C. 



Volume 123 1967 Number 3605 



Observations 



On the Pelagic Distribution of Seabirds 



In the Western Indian Ocean 



By Frank B. Gill 



Research Assistant, Division of Birds l 



In 1952, regarding our knowledge of seabirds, the Indian Ocean was 

 considered to be the least-explored part of the world ocean (Murphy, 

 1952). The validity of this statement was dramatized soon thereafter 

 by the discovery of two new petrels, Bulweria jallax (Jouanin, 1955) 

 and Pterodroma baraui (Jouanin, 1963), and an Indian Ocean breeding 

 colony of a third petrel, Pterodroma arminjoniana (Murphy and Pen- 

 noyer, 1952). Still, the need for information on the pelagic distribu- 

 tion and behavior of seabirds in the Indian Ocean remains (Bourne, 

 1963), for, although summaries of the scattered accounts are available 

 (Bourne, 1960, 1963; Jouanin, 1957; Watson, Zusi, and Storer, 1963), 

 the information on which they are based comes primarily from well- 

 travelled commercial routes. By contrast, the rest of that ocean has 

 received scant attention. 



The International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE), a multi- 

 nation endeavor coordinated and sponsored by UNESCO, has been 



1 Present address: Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 



1 

 246-002—67 



