Stiff-winged and low, a Yelkouan shearwater shears the swell off the Algerian coast. A true Mediterranean seabird, photographed from a small boat at first light.
To photograph the Yelkouan shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) you have to leave the land behind. This is a true seabird of the Mediterranean, spending almost its entire life over open water and coming ashore only to breed, on remote islands and cliffs, under cover of darkness.
I made this image from a small boat off the Algerian coast, soon after dawn. Shearwaters fly in a way no land bird does — long stiff wings held flat, banking low along the troughs of the swell, tilting from side to side so that they show first their dark upperparts and then their pale bellies, barely a wingbeat between glides.
Photographing them is a test of balance and timing. The boat is moving, the sea is moving, the bird is fast and low, and the autofocus has to find a grey bird against grey-blue water. For every frame like this one there are dozens of misses — a wingtip clipped, the bird lost behind a wave, the horizon thrown askew.
The Yelkouan shearwater is a Mediterranean near-endemic and a species of real conservation concern, threatened at its breeding colonies by introduced predators and at sea by fishing bycatch. Algerian waters are an important part of its range, yet it is rarely seen by anyone who does not go looking for it offshore.
I love this picture for its emptiness — one bird, the open sea, and the soft band of haze where the water meets the sky. It is the portrait of a life lived entirely on the wind and the waves.
February 18, 2026
