E54 — Debi Shearwater: Pelagics, Seabirds & a Life at Sea 🌊🐦

In this episode of Naturally Scott, Scott sits down with Debi Shearwater — one of the most iconic figures in seabirding and pelagic birding anywhere in the world.

Often called the “Queen of the Seas,” Debi has spent more than four decades leading pelagic trips off the California coast and across the globe, introducing thousands of people to the magic of seabirds, marine mammals, and life on the open ocean.

From her early days as an Army wife to launching a life-changing pelagic career in 1976 out of Monterey Bay, Debi’s story is anything but ordinary. Along the way, she’s been featured in The Big Year (portrayed by Anjelica Huston), built a global reputation as a fearless leader at sea, and inspired generations of birders to step off land and into a completely different world.

In this wide-ranging and fun conversation, Scott and Debi explore:

🌊 The origins of pelagic birding and how it changed her life
 🐦 What makes seabirds so unique — and so addictive
 🎬 Her role in The Big Year and birding’s place in popular culture
 🦅 Stories from Antarctica, Iceland, and beyond
 🍸 A few unexpected detours — including bartending and life off the water
 🌍 A new birding festival launching in 2027

Debi’s life is a reminder that sometimes the most extraordinary journeys begin with simply saying yes — and stepping onto a boat.

📬 Stay curious & get bonus content:
 https://naturallyscott.kit.com/5fd12c6752

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hello, this is Scott Harrison. Welcome to this episode or this edition, I'm not really sure what to call it, of Naturally Scott. I am your host and pleased to be so. Today is just going to be fun. Debbie Shearwater, who a lot of you know is my guest today. Debbie is the queen of the seas. She is an absolute doll. She was a guest in my book, Why We Love Birds, and I was honored for her to be there. And we're gonna talk about a bunch of stuff today. We're gonna talk about her time as an army wife, we're gonna talk about her virtual pet Golden Eagle, we're gonna talk about her actual pet, me, um, and maybe a little bartending that she did on the side. Debbie tends to be a total badass. She takes ownership of that, maybe even a little bit of pride. If you saw the movie The Big Year or read the book, she was highlighted in both in the movie. She was played by Angelica Houston, and uh that's the same movie where Greg Miller, who was our first guest here on Natalie, Scott, and he was portrayed by Jack Black. So that movie's kind of significant to us. We're gonna go back to 1976 when she did her first magic, life-changing trip out of Monterey, and we're gonna talk about a new festival that Debbie is going to be launched next April, April of 2027. So there's plenty to talk about, plenty to learn, plenty to enjoy. Trips to Antarctica and Iceland, literally hundreds and hundreds of trips with thousands and thousands of people over 44 years off the California coast and almost everywhere else in the world where there are birds and mammals. So sit back, relax, maybe grab a drink, and enjoy some time while you meet Debbie Shearwater. Have a great day. Thanks for being a part of this.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Hello! Look at us.

SPEAKER_04 1:42

Look at us, technology. We're geniuses, you and I.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Amazing.

SPEAKER_04 1:48

No, no, no, maybes. We're good now. So that being the case, a couple of quick things, and then we'll go ahead and start it up. Hello and welcome to this edition, this episode of Naturally Scott. I'm your host, Scott Harris, and uh once again, we've got a great show for you today. Uh Debbie Shearwater is our guest. I've got a few questions for her. Um, I'm sure she's going to have some great answers for us. I want to thank Debbie. It took us almost an hour to work through our technological difficulties, but she did it, um, bringing her right into the 21st century now. So we're very excited about that. Next thing you know, Debbie, you're going to be texting people. That's the next step. Now, Debbie Debbie Shearwater has a title, unofficial but no less appropriate, called Queen of the Seas. And we're going to talk about that a little bit. But first, I want to say thank you. Debbie is a guest in my book, uh Why We Love Birding, um, which is uh the book I've mentioned here before. Interviewed 52 fantastic uh birders, none better than Debbie or more interesting. And Debbie, actually, you'll be the first to know, or anyone watching the podcast will be the first to know. They've moved the publication date up until April of 27 because uh Kimberly Kaufman was kind enough to ask me to speak at next year's um Ohio Festival. So I'll be speaking at the biggest week, and they wanted to get the book out before that. So I think that's gonna be fantastic. I'm really excited. And you guys, the the chapters are in alphabetical order. So when you get the book, you're gonna want to jump right to the S's and uh and go to Debbie's chapter because it's fascinating. Um so I wanted to start with two things, Debbie, before we get to some other stuff. Uh, the names. I want to talk about the name Shearwater and where that came from because it was not your given name or your married name. And then I want to talk about the title Queen of the Seas and how that was absolutely earned. And we can even sneak in a little discussion in there about you being a total badass, um, which I believe is also true. So let's let's start with the Shearwater story. How do we wind up um as uh Debbie Shearwater?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Okay, so my given name is Deborah Love Milichap. And Love was my grandmother's maiden name. So I always liked that. And growing up in the 1960s, I loved it. It was fun. I was, you know, the love child. But the last name, the surname, uh, never worked for me. Uh nobody ever could pronounce it correctly, spell it correctly. They always got it wrong. And starting in about fourth grade, I wanted to change my name. So I spent many years of my life thinking about that. And finally, when I was 30 years old, I went to court and legally changed my name because coincidentally, or something that was happening at the same time as wanting to change my name was I was changing um this little operation that used to be called Monterey Bay Excursions, and I wanted to have a better name for it, and I wanted it to not just be limited to Monterey Bay. So came up with the idea of shearwater for a surname, and I thought, now what could go wrong with that? It's pronounced exactly the way it's spelled. There's no problem spelling it. Yeah, well, I I was wrong. I was totally wrong. I've been called Surewater, Love Water, Stillwater, Deep Water, everything under the sun. And it is, in fact, actually a proper surname. There are people in the world who are born with the surname of Shearwater. But I went to court in 1980. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

What country are they from? Where where is Shearwater?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Uh well, okay, there's a lot more to this story if you want to hear it. They're from the UK, from United Kingdom.

unknown 5:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

So uh one day, one day I was uh on a ferry or trying to get on a ferry to go from Algeciras, Spain to Morocco. And I met this guy and he asked me all about I was sitting in a car waiting, we were waiting in a long ferry line, hundreds of vehicles. Guy came up, started talking to me, asked me all these questions, and he said, Shearwater, that's from the Isle of Man. Well, the Isle of Man is where the Manx shearwater breeds, and one of the first books that I ever read in my life was about by Ron Lockley, and it was about banding Manx Shearwaters at the Isle of Man. So, and it turns out, and I didn't research it then, but later I did, and there are a lot of Millachaps, my maiden name, at the Isle of Man in Britain. So there was a whole thing about this with changing the name, but then I also named the business Shearwater Journeys, and that was it. It's history after that. It was a good decision.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Well, congratulations. It's a name that's stuck. It's certainly well renowned in the uh in the birding community. Um so tell us about Shearwater Journeys. Tell us, tell us, we're gonna go back, we're gonna go back to Army Wife, we're gonna go back to dental hygienists and we're gonna talk a little bit about your past, but but get us going right now on the pelagic trips and how that came to be and and how Shearwater Journeys and 40 years on the water came to be.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Well, um, I think as a child I was always interested in wildlife. I was always interested in boats, ships, boats, vessels of any sort. Um, so you know, you have there I sent you a picture of me standing in front of the USS Potomac, and I was only three or four years old at the time. So I think I had a fascination with boats from an early age. But I had a bigger fascination with birds once I started birdwatching. And um my beginning days of bird watching were in Texas. My first field guide was the Roger Torrey Peterson Texas Field Guide. And if you look at that book, which I still have, the plates on Shearwaters were almost non-existent, and they were hand-drawn black and white sketches. So of course I wasn't gonna see them in Texas, but I moved briefly to the East Coast and went on my first pelagic trip. And I was that was it. That first trip, I I I knew I was moving to Monterey, California. I never wanted to move to California. I thought I had too many cars, too many people. I still think that 40 plus years later, but but let me ask a question for the audience.

SPEAKER_04 8:21

What state is it that you live in currently, Debbie?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

California. Yep. Just checking it. And which is why wherever I go birding and in my home area, there's no cell phone service, which is why I basically don't use a cell phone. I don't need one. Well, I don't need one for my life here, but any part of my life beyond here. So I went on my first pelagic trip in Monterey Bay in April of 1976, and I thought it was uh off the charts amazing. I walked down the dock in the morning, and the whole dock area was all covered with full mars sitting all over right there at the dock, and I thought, you gotta be kidding me. It would be 40 years before that would happen again. But in the beginning, I mean, I had many amazing experiences with birds, but then I found whales. And the seabirds might not have sustained me for over 40 years, but the whales certainly did, and the other marine life. So it was it was it was a thing. And then I started doing trips just for my friends, just for my friends. I invited them on the I organized my own boat trips in 1976, just a couple trips, not a big deal. And everybody on the boat was invited back to my house afterwards for homemade desserts and coffee. That's how it started. Then we found a rare bird, a streak shearwater, a bird that normally occurs in Japan. And so there was a lot a lot of people wanting to go on trips after that, and so I started to open it up to in 1978, is when I opened up boat trips to pretty much anyone, and then it just got bigger and bigger every year for many years. That's right. So that's how it started.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Now, when you see a bird like that, that's generally only found in Japan, did you know what it was, or do you have guides that you looked it up? How did that work? How did you determine that that's what it was?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Scott, if you go back and you look at what field guides were available for people to learn seabirds back in the late 1970s and even the early 1980s, it's pathetic. Um, we did have, you know, I did I always had had leaders on my trips, um, probably several at least several hundred over the years, and also chummers. Usually chummers were young people who couldn't afford to go and they'd get a free trip for chumming. Um, but the field guides were it was Peter Harrison's Seabirds of the World field guide that really changed seabirding worldwide. That really made identification easier. But as we now know, a lot of seabirds are just not that easy to ID. So some of them you see at sea and you just have to let them go. And also we are learning new things about seabirds all the time, and species are being split, and you know that that continues even today. So it's it's it's been a very long road.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

So you you talk about that first day in 1976 and the foamers along the dock and whatnot. Tell us what it is. What is what is the romance that brought you back to the ocean for 40 years? I know you developed a love of cetaceans and we'll talk about that, but but that first moment, I mean, did you feel like you were coming home? Was it was it a an awakening of things that you knew when you were a little girl at three years old looking out at a ship or what what was it?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

I think it's something that's very deeply rooted in my life, and that I like wide open spaces with lots of wildlife and very few people. And that's what the ocean is. If you look at the ocean, I mean a lot of people just look out there and they just see water. Um but that was never the case for me. Never. I mean, I could spot dolphins, I think well, we clocked at least once on one of my trips, and I spot dolphins, a herd of dolphins three miles away. Now I'm not seeing individual dolphins at that distance. I'm seeing the white water that they're throwing up, and I knew that by the looks of it, that was a herd of dolphins. And we drove three miles and you know, we were with hundreds, if not a couple thousand dolphins. So it's just wide open places with lots of wildlife undisturbed and so few people, that's what I love.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

Does that describe the county you live in now?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yes, very much so. I mean, there are more people here. No, no, I picked it because I wanted to buy a house and I could afford a house here, but not a house on the coast. And though actually, the climate, the weather here is much, much better. I love it. Do you really love it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

Now, and you are, we're gonna go back to the ocean. There's a lot to talk about on that, but you do love the county that you're in. Um, and you have described it to me as maybe the most underbirded county in the area in which you live. Um, as far as birds that have been counted. Not birds that are there, but birds that have been seen have been counted. And you're working toward changing that and bringing a little awareness and uh and a couple more birds onto a list there.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Well, it it I call it the lost county. I live in San Benito County, California. California has 58 counties, and all of the counties that border my county have lots of birders. They've been studied, they've been, you know, documented. Whereas my county, it's kind of lost. You know, it's that uh well, I don't know. It's just always been that way, but that's part of the reason why it's so wild and so like fresh to birding. But I mean that is changing. I mean, when I moved here in uh 1996, absolutely no birders lived in the the county. Um people didn't people only came to a couple places in the county, you know, birders only visited a couple areas, Pinocchio Valley in the winter, and maybe pinnacles in the spring. But even then it was very few people coming here. But now there's more birders, and we have birders living in the county, and um the pinnacles became a national park instead of a national monument, and that really put it on the map for a lot of people. And I'm I think it was just me talking about it, and and finally we are going to change all that, and we're going to have a a big bird festival here in 2027. So it's it's just an amazing place. It's not just the birds, but also all the mammals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

Well, I love I love reading your your your posts and stuff where you list everything that you've seen. So you are a great guest in that you're fascinated, but you're a terrible guest in that you're making my ask my questions out of order. Um, I was gonna save your festival for the end, but we're gonna go ahead and talk about it now. We still have got to get back to the ocean, but in between this and the festival, tell me about your golden eagle. You are it's your license plate, you have fallen.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

It's my most most favorite bird in the whole world, the golden eagle. It absolutely is. Yes, eel air. And um he looked for a mate for something like seven years, and he even did a whole courtship flight. He spotted a female one day, he did the whole courtship flight, and um he wasn't interested. But then finally he did find a mate, and they started to build a nest in a tower power, which had a live 5,000 volt wire. So I had the electric company come out and they covered the wire, so the birds did not get hurt, but that nest was never going to be a success. And finally they did nest in a eucalyptus tree and successfully raised young. But something happened. I don't know, she left him. I don't know what the problem is, and he's a very vocal eagle, and now as of um January 2026, I have not seen him. So either he moved to another area or went somewhere. But my my um statement is if you're birding in my home county and you don't see a golden eagle, you just haven't looked because we have we the Diablo Range runs through our county and it has the highest concentration of golden eagles in the whole world. The whole world. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

Year-round population?

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

And if you spend a day out there looking, you'll find one.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Absolutely. If not half a dozen or more.

SPEAKER_04 17:41

Wow. That's a fairly well kept secret. Okay, but it's gonna be it's gonna be less of a secret come next year, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Well with the festival, yes.

SPEAKER_04 17:54

Okay, well, funny how we segued into that. Tell us about the festival, tell us what what got you going on that and what you're hoping to have have happen during the festival, and who's supposed to come and and speak and exhibit and tour guide for you and everything. Tell us about it.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Um I met this lady about I don't know, somewhere 15 to 20 years ago. Her name is Sally Calhoun. She her background is that she's a software engineer. Sally and her husband bought a ranch in my county, Piscinus Ranch, that was slated to be developed into 3,000 homes, a golf course, and all that goes with all that schools, etc. Sally and her husband bought the property. They bought the Pisces Ranch, and that is where we are going to hold this festival. It will be a completely unique festival in that the headquarters will not only be the ranch itself, the vendors will be housed in the event barn, a big barn that we have she has converted for events. Uh, we have a restaurant right on the ranch. Birding on the ranch itself is out of this world. It's just great. Lawrence's goldfinches will be nesting in April of next year. Um, grasshopper sparrows nest on the ranch. There's all the California birds you want. The um tri-colored blackbirds have had had three colonies on the ranch last year. Uh yellow-billed magpies, you know, all of the California specialty birds, including and especially California condors. The condors are now seen easily pretty far out from Pinnacles itself, including on the ranch, on the ground, on Piscinus Ranch. Uh, we do have some overnight facilities for people to stay at the ranch, but um we won't be able, we're expecting 300 people. So we um won't be able to ha house everybody at the ranch, but we have some newer motels right in town that are very nice, 15 minutes from the ranch. So I don't know who the all the vendors will be yet, but Sally will be speaking the first night. I'll be speaking the second night. We will have a pelagic trip. Yes, I will be on it. Um and our main guest speaker will be Ken Kaufman on Saturday night. He is coming to speak. Um in the horse barn, which will be converted into our Kino speaker event place right on the ranch. And um won't be barn owls flying around at night. I mean, we have tons of barn owls. It's just it's just a very wildlife rich place, in addition to all the birds. So there's badgers, coyotes, gray foxes, a mountain lion now and then, and all the specialties of the area. So that's the festival in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_04 21:05

How many days?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

It's April 20th to the 25th. Is actually every day there's something. The Pelagic Trip will be on the 20th.

SPEAKER_04 21:15

Is there a website yet? Is there an official name? I want to put some information up on the screen, and then obviously as we get closer to next year, I'm gonna want to help you promote it.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Thank you very much. Yeah, we have a landing page right now. Um, if anyone just googles the name of the festival is the Fault Line Birding Festival. The San Andreas Fault runs straight through the Pisces Ranch and Hollister, the city of Hollister. I mean, we literally have earthquakes every other day, at least. We don't feel most of them, they're nothing. But it's the Fault Line Birding Festival. If anyone Googles that, they should get our landing page. Um Um we are about to have a major event in April where I am inviting lots of photographers to come to the ranch. We're putting them up overnight, and um they're gonna go out and get all the photographs we need for our new website. The new website will be up in June. Full website.

SPEAKER_04 22:18

Should I double check my email? Did I did I miss my invitation to the April uh photography event? I'll I'll double check. Who wouldn't want to be invited to something you're doing? Everybody would want to be invited to something you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

It's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

I imagine that it will, and I hope that I'm able to make it. And actually, the book that you're in, Why We Love Birds, is gonna be released next year in April. Uh the publisher has bumped up the publication date by a month. So um the uh the book the book will be out in April, which is kind of a should be a cool thing, I think, for all of us. Um but I'm very excited about this, and I will uh we'll post that landing page now and um we'll highlight the show um over the course of the next year and see if we can't get a few people to come out.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Good, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 23:10

And you're trying to keep it at uh at 300?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

We have no idea what's gonna happen. Uh I I don't know, you know.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

Well, you've got a great keynote speaker. I mean, Ken's terrific. I uh, you know, Ken's in the book as well, and Ken's been on the podcast, and you know, he just he's a great guy, and he'll attract some people as you certainly will. And as you said, the location will. It'll be there'll be an appeal to going somewhere new and different that a lot of us haven't been. Um I love Pinnacles. I mean, I've not been on the ranch you've talked about, but I spent some time at Pinnacles, and it's a beautiful county. Um, I'm I'm looking now at a at a picture of a ferruginous hawk that I got in flight at Pinnacles that I just love. Just love this bird. Um so well, congratulations. I'm really excited about it. And um I hope my travel plans get me to uh get me to San Benito County next next April. So it will be a little bit more than a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

We're gonna have field trips everywhere, like from the ranch. We'll go to the coast for coastal birds, we'll go to Pinocchio Valley, you know, we'll go to all different places. So, but the head, the whole event center is at the ranch itself.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

And you're gonna lead some of those tours?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

Yeah. All right. All right. Well, let's let's go back to the part about you being a total badass, which you have mentioned to me before. If somebody reads the book, The Big Year, which you are in, and you said that the book is fairly accurate, it will prove your point about being a total badass. So tell us a little bit about that experience of being in the book and then being portrayed by Angelica Houston in the movie The Big Year, along with a mutual friend of ours, Greg Miller. Uh, Greg was our very first guest on the podcast. We're about 55 guests in now with you, Debbie, but Greg was the very first one. So we're currently bookedend by uh Big Year stars. So tell us about the book and the movie and the whole experience and how that came about.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

The book? Well, I mean, the only thing I can tell you about the book is I was called Mark, the guy who wrote it, called me and interviewed me on the phone, and I thought he just asked a lot of weird questions, really. So when the book finally did come out, I read the chapter where he wrote about the pelagic trip. And um, you know, I didn't like it. You know, it makes me look pretty, pretty, well, badass, but also, you know, pretty rugged, you know. And so a friend of mine said to me, Don't worry about it, don't worry about it. Any any any anything in the news is good news. And I'm like, yeah, okay. Well, it turned out he was right because a lot of people came on boat trips after that book came out. A lot, a whole lot. I would say 10 out of 40 people on almost every trip for years and years and years. Some people came, they just wanted to see, they weren't murderers. They told me this. They just came, they wanted to see if I was as bad as the book said I was, and that's why they came. So and some young people came, and I later found out just chatting with them on the boat that they were scared, actually scared to meet me, you know, and I was like, oh my god, you know, really. But um, the book was fantastic, I I thought. He did get one thing wrong in the chapter that he wrote about the pelagic trip. He said that the boat was stopped for a gray whale, but that wasn't the case. The boat was stopping for a blue whale, and it's and still in the early 1980s, we didn't know the status, the worldwide status of blue whales yet in the world, and and um it was still thought that they could be going extinct. So a blue whale was a really big deal to stop for. And it is what he wrote in the book was true that um Sandy Camito walked up to the window and the captain's uh where he was standing behind the wheel, and Sandy said, Um, I think it's time to go. I didn't come to here to see whales, I came here to see birds. And the captain went, see her? I don't go anywhere until she tells me. And that was it. So that was true. So the I, you know, the book was was very accurate. The movie they took a lot of Hollywood liberties there. I never pulled a knife on Sandy Camito in real life. You know, I mean, my dad saw the movie and he said, You pulled a knife on a guy, and I go, No, I didn't do that in real life. That's Hollywood. But then later, Sandy came out. I should send you a picture of that. He came with me on a boat after after the um movie came out, and we hammed it up. My boat captain gave me a big knife, and Sandy and I hammed it up, and I pulled the knife on him. So but Sandy and I were we we became friends after all that and everything. It was it was fun.

SPEAKER_04 28:37

Did you make a lot of friends over the years? Thousands with the Pelagic trip?

SPEAKER_03 28:45

Thousands and thousands. You did 40 40 years of trips? 44. 44. How many trips would that be?

SPEAKER_01 28:56

I don't know. I lost count. I tried for a long time I tracked the number of hours I had spent at sea and totaled it up into like what would be if you compress all those hours into a year or two or three or four. It was a lot because in addition to doing the one-day trips off California, I started doing expedition voyages. I was hired by a company to be a naturalist and guide and lecturer on expedition voyages all over the world. I mean, to Antarctica, to Svalbard, Galapagos, to the Russian Far East, many, many places.

SPEAKER_04 29:33

Did you have a favorite among those places?

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Antarctica. The Antarctic Peninsula will always be my favorite. Antarctica, the peninsula and South Georgia. I mean, South Georgia is just such a gem.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

And what was it that you loved about those?

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Wide open spaces with lots of wildlife and very few people. Many on a beach in South Georgia with 250,000 king penguins. And the only people you see are the people who are on the ship with you, and I was on small ships. 50 passenger ships, not 100, 200, 50.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

So they're gonna put this on your tombstone, wide open spaces with lots of wildlife and very few people. That will be it's already written, that will be there. Maybe in small print and totally badass, but we'll see how that goes. Um, how much you want chiseled into that rock. So, how many times did you make it to Antarctica?

SPEAKER_01 30:41

At least 13.

SPEAKER_03 30:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah. My last trip was just in January 2024. Do you hope to go back again? No.

SPEAKER_04 30:55

No? No.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

No.

SPEAKER_04 30:58

That that time has passed.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Yes, and also the seabirds of the Southern Ocean have crashed. It was shocking. That in 2024, when I returned, that was my first return in over a decade, a little over a decade, and I could not believe how few tube noses I saw at sea when we were traveling at sea. And it's it's dramatic. It's extremely dramatic. There's no one there's no one thing we can point to and say, it's because of this, it's because of over fishing krill, or it's because of this, or this, or this. No, there's no one particular thing that anyone can agree on, you know, is the one thing. So, but they're gone. There's a lot of birds gone. Millions, millions of birds are gone. The same thing happened in the high Arctic, and we were easily seeing that. You went to all these fantastic reading cliffs where you would have kitty wakes and and full mars and all nest sitting on the cliffs, and they should have been sitting on eggs or they should have had hatched young and they had nothing. So it's I didn't realize the same thing was happening in the southern ocean, that it was disappearing and it's it's gone. I mean, yeah, you will still see birds if you go there, and you'll definitely still see penguins on the landings. But as far as hours and hours and hours of looking for birds where there used to be so many, it's very sad. Seabirds go ahead. Well, I wanted to say one more thing. As a group of birds, there are there is no other group of birds in the world that is more threatened than seabirds. And I'm talking about shear waters, albatrosses, storm petrels, the owds. I'm talking about the true seabirds. No other group of birds is more threatened, and yet most people don't see them because most people don't go on the ocean. And what you don't see and what you don't know birds you don't know, you're not likely to try to fight for them. So it's um it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_04 33:24

But you don't have any definitive answers on why you think there's been this dramatic reduction.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

No. It could be it could be a lot of things. It could be over harvesting krill, but it also could be that the return of the great whales in the southern ocean, and the whales are uh competitors that also feed on krill. I don't know. I mean it's it's too huge of a problem for one solution.

SPEAKER_04 33:56

Wow. Okay, all right. Well, let's let's shift. You mentioned the great whales, and you earlier mentioned whales, and I know you are a giant fan of uh of cetaceans and and specifically whales. So tell us where that love developed and and how you nurtured it and and where it is now. Do you have favorite whales, favorite oceans, favorite stories? Tell us about whales, Debbie.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

September 1976. I was invited on a private pelagic trip out of Monterey. Only five of us were on board. The night prior, no fuel guides, there is nothing available. How do you learn to identify a whale at sea? There is nothing available in print. There is an old NOAA publication, 444, that shows all these black and white photos of dead whales on the beach. And that's how I learned how to identify whales by Robert L. Pittman. And we go on this boat trip, just the five of us, in September, and a whale shows up. And it's a blue whale. The first whale I ever saw in my life was a blue whale, the largest animal that's ever lived on earth, bigger than any dinosaurs. A heart the size of a Volkswagen bug, an aorta big enough for a small child to crawl through. So I go on. Yes, a majestic animal, unbelievable. And the five of us had nothing to say. We were silent. And one of my friends who was there that day, he recently completed an old eBird checklist from that day, and he wrote about that whale, and he said, it was as if we all had a religious experience. So that was my first whale, and everything was incredible after that. You know, I I got I got lucky on a lot of things. You know, I did things people said I shouldn't do. Like I ran a winter trip because I asked when would be the best time to see a lazon albatross. And and um everybody said winter, winter, because back then we didn't have the albatross colonies in Mexico, the lazon albatross colonies. So I ran a winter trip, and now everyone told me and what, but winter, who wants to go out there in winter? You shouldn't go do a winter trip. Well, I did a winter trip, and we we saw sperm whales, my captain and I. We were very far offshore and they dove. And he said, Okay, looked at his watch and he said, Your time's up. We have to turn around and go back now, or you can wait for these sperm whales to come up, which could take 40 minutes or more. But that's it. You can't do anything else. You can't look for a liaison albatross. I said, We're gonna wait for those whales to come up. We're not wanna tell everybody that's what we're doing. They'll figure it out and they'll get mad at me, but we're gonna wait for those sperm whales to come up. So yeah, I made the boat sit there and wait. Meanwhile, we were chumming and all the birds that were following us in the back of the boat sat down in our wake. And one guy who had his girlfriend there, who was not a birder, she after a few minutes said, Okay, so what is that really weird-looking gull in the back of the boat? And it was Lon albatross sitting amongst all the gulls. So these were hardcore birders, and I said, Okay, I know you all got mad at me for saying we're gonna sit here and wait for these whales to come up. Um, but we would have never seen that Laison albatross that was following us for God knows how long if we hadn't stopped and waited for the birds to come in, which taught me a big lesson. When you go walking through the woods, you stop and listen. And when you go out on a boat out on the ocean, you should stop and look around. And the whales came up and we saw the sperm whales.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

And you have remained in love with marine mammals.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

I love marine mammals. Well, it's not to lay. I mean, I like everything about them. I mean, they are amazing creatures, and at that time, you know, when I started doing all these trips in Monterey Bay, especially, we didn't know a whole lot about marine mammals. I mean, I organized the first Earthwatch program that radio tagged blue whales in the world. And I worked with people on sea turtles, leatherback sea turtles, and just there's so many things. I sponsored two graduate students. Um, one studied Rissos dolphins, and she wrote her master's thesis on it, and that was all we knew about Rissos dolphins at that time, back in the early 80s. So it's um I was actually one of the founders of the uh killer whale um ID photo catalog for California. I think it started out as for Monterey Bay, but I think it's bigger now. So, you know, a lot of people don't know that I did all this other stuff with green mammals and other life. I went to schools, I did hundreds of programs about whales, gray whales for kids. And took hundreds of kids out on the ocean. That was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04 39:20

Some of them are gonna know now when they listen and watch this podcast. Now you talk about paying attention and doing things a little bit different. Didn't you and Peter Pyle put together a trip from Bodega Bay to Fort Bragg one year and got to see a couple of spectacular things? Tell us about that trip.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

We did. We did. That was the trip was the original idea for that trip came from my boat captain up in Bodega Bay. Um, and he said, What about doing an eye? So I went to the back of the boat. Peter was on the boat with me that day. I said, Hey, he's saying let's do this trip. And Peter's like, yeah, let's do it. And I'm like, okay. We got it all organized, and uh it was the end of August. I forget the year. Other people, other birders will remember. But we had five liters and a sold-out boat, and the idea was we were gonna go leave Badega Bay at 5:30 in the morning, go offshore as far as we could, hoping to see Cook's petrols or something like that. There were still like mythical birds in those days, and end up at Fort Bragg, get off the boat. Little did we know, we had to walk up, little did I know, we had to walk up this really steep embankment, and then we stayed in a hotel. So we didn't stay on the boat. There was no overnight facilities on the boat, and thinking that wasn't possible. So we walk up the hill to stay at this motel. Well, some very good friends of mine and very good seabirders from Arkansas were late that morning. And I waited an hour for them with everyone standing on the boat and everyone getting pissed off at me, if not overtly saying something, but under their breath at least. And finally, Max and Helen arrived and the boat took off, and people were saying, Man, they must be really important people that she waited for them because she doesn't wait for anybody, which is true. You know, have left leaders behind who were late. Um, and uh and it was terrible. The weather was the seas were terrible. We couldn't get offshore, it was horrible. And my favorite deck can, Vince Orsini, was with me, and he had asked me if I wanted to bring live bait. Live bait means anchovies, live anchovies in the bait tank, you know, swimming around in there. And I go, yeah, because that meant if we saw albacore, we're gonna throw a line out and try and catch an albacore tuna. And uh so I did fish on a lot of several of my trips whenever we could for albacore, my favorite fish. And so we get out there, and um, about five leaders, I think four of them were seasick or sick. And I walked to the back of the boat, and my friend Jim Danzavaker was standing there. He was a leader, and he yelled, lazon albatross. Well, that wouldn't be such a big deal. But in flies, this hulking big albatross. And it was ended up being the first record of a white-capped albatross for North America. And not only did we get lots of photos, which absolutely you needed photos in those days, and but you still do today for the California Records Committee, but we also got video, video recording, sound recording of it. It flew in, landed behind the boat, and I yelled at Vince, throw those anchovies, throw those live anchovies. And he did. He tossed over anchovies, and that albatross went motoring, made a wake in front of its breasts as it was motoring in to get those anchovies and keep the other albatrosses away. It was unbelievable. It was a totally un unbelievable trip.

SPEAKER_04 42:59

And a bird you probably wouldn't have seen if you'd left on time.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

That's the whole thing. I told people later, look, if I, you know, we wouldn't be where we were when we were if I hadn't waited for Max and Helen. And, you know, it worked out. It just worked out.

SPEAKER_04 43:17

Well, thank you, Max and Helen. All right, so let's back up a little bit. Um, we're gonna back up to a little house sparrow named Meep, uh, your brother Scott. And um, I believe at the time uh you uh fed a little whiskey to Meep at some point. So I think the readers are gonna be or the the listeners are gonna be curious about that. So tell us about meep.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Well, um geez, so I was a very young girl in my early twenties, and uh no, I think I wasn't even 20 years old yet. Had a husband in Vietnam. Flying gunship helicopters. And my brother, like you know, little boys do, he was um probably six or seven years old at the time, found this little bird that had fallen out of a nest in a street lamp, brought it home, put it in a shoebox, put it in the gro in the cellar, and then that night, later that night, I heard it cheapen. And so I brought the box upstairs, and I'm like, well, what should we do with this? You know, my mom said you were not a burger.

SPEAKER_04 44:27

You were not a birder at the time, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:29

But you were just like, give it a shot of whiskey.

SPEAKER_04 44:32

So you were a bartender, but not a burger?

SPEAKER_01 44:35

No. I wanted to be a bartender one time in my life, and we gave it a shot of whiskey, and the little thing would take a step and fall sideways, and then take another step and fall the other sideways. So then we ended up it lived through the night, which they rarely did. And it lived through the night, and I went to the store and I got baby food, human baby food, blueberry buckle, fed it with a little eyedropper, and she actually lived, and we watched her for hours and hours and grew all her feathers. And the next year he found another one, so then we had two of them, and um, she became my pet, and that's what got me interested in bird watching. I watched those feathers explode on her body, all the feathers grow and everything, and it was it was just incredible.

SPEAKER_04 45:21

So didn't she live live five years or so?

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah, she lived five years, and the other one lived five years, and then later in my life in California, I rescued two, and they also lived five years. And um, they're the best little pets in the world. Absolutely amazing. But uh, I could walk outside with the first two. I'd walk outside and they'd be sitting on my shoulders, or I'd be driving across the country in my old orange VW camper. They'd be sitting up here, one be sitting here on my glasses, and you could see like little kids in the car in front of me, and they'd turn around and they'd look and they'd be yelling at their parents, and their parents would be going, Oh, shut up, shut up, you know. And then they're looking at the bird, and I'd take the bird off and hold it in front of the window, and they would see it, and they'd see it flying around inside my camper. It was a satirical.

SPEAKER_04 46:12

Oh, that's fantastic. Now, between that part of your life and before you went to California, uh, you were an army wife and you got transferred to Texas, which I believe is where you got your first field guide and really became a birder. And didn't you have to drive like 12 hours or something to get to an Audubon club that from from the base? Tell us, tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Oh, well, yeah, it is where I really started. I bought a book by this guy named Roger Barton for one dollar, how to do bird watching. And it said to join an Audubon Society. So once I got to Texas, we had orders for Texas, and we were order had orders for Fort Hood. So I live about 70 miles north of Austin, joined the Audubon Society. They had field trips. So I thought, you know, I'll just drive down and meet them at their location. But I missed them. So in the fog, I had to drive another, I don't know, another hour or so. And um, I finally found them. It's it was like February, it was not the best time of year. They were in these woods, and you know, I I I pulled my car up, and they're standing in front of me after I got out the car, and it's were probably 15 or 18 bird watchers, and one person in that group was a tall man, and he came walking towards me with a big smile on his face and his hand outstretched and welcomed me to the group, and his name was Ed Kutak. He is a very longtime famous birder in all of Texas, and he became my birding mentor.

SPEAKER_03 47:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

And it it was fantastic from there on.

SPEAKER_04 48:00

Now, were any of the other birders in that group that first day? Were they women?

SPEAKER_01 48:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 48:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 48:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:08

All right, and you and I are gonna talk about that in a couple of weeks. We've got uh Cy Montgomery and Lynn Scarlett joining us for a panel to talk about what it's been like to bird for the last half century for women in this country and how it's changed and and hopefully gotten uh better over the years. We'd like to we'd like to think that. Now you left Texas, went to California, and you were a dental hygienist, I believe? A job you loved.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Yep. I was a dental hygienist for I went to school for four years. I went to college, went to a dental hygiene program, and um I worked in dental hygiene for about a decade, and I I I had the perfect balance in my life. So I was doing dental hygiene two or three days a week, and then I was doing the boat trips for fun. The boat trips were not a business at that point. And I love my dental hygiene job. A lot of people mistakenly think that I didn't like it, but I loved it. Uh, I ended up with a working with a great team of people, but I became disabled from dental hygiene. And then um, you know, and it wasn't a good time. Oh yeah, many, many RSIs, repetitive strain injuries, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

So then I decided to s try and take the boat trips and make it into a real business. And that's when it really took off. And it wasn't too many years after that that I started working in the expedition business, which is just a whole nother world, where I actually, you know, worked on expedition ships all around the world.

SPEAKER_04 49:40

But the pelagic trips that you ran, that was you, that was your business, that was shearwater journey. Totally. The expeditions you were often hired as a guide, right? You or a naturalist.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Yeah, guide lecturer, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 49:56

All right. Was that easier to not have to worry about captains and chumming and people showing up and all that? Or did you really just love running shearwater?

SPEAKER_01 50:07

I liked it all, all of it the same. By the time I got into the expedition business, I was crazy about it. I loved it. It was um first I was asked to lead two trips by a local company to the Galapagos to be their naturalists. That was in 1996. And I went twice that year to the Galapagos. And then um I started branching out more, and I went to the British Bird Fair back in those days when it was a really big British bird fair. And there was a guy standing outside my booth clutching a bunch of brochures, and he was waiting until everyone got through to come and speak with me. And it was one of these, you know, European birders all dressed in dark green drab like they do for bird watching. And he came up to me and he he watched what I was doing. I was explaining why Monterey Bay is such a fantastic place and the migration of the gray whales and this and that and the other. And then he came up to me and he said, How would you like to circumnavigate Iceland by ship? And I just looked at him and like he said, Well, what are you thinking about? Just say yes. I said, Okay, yes. So that was my introduction to oceanwide expeditions, a family-owned business, and um I was on board a ship and we circumnavigated Iceland by ship. I saw the rocky ledge where the last great owks were killed. I had a wonderful time, and basically oceanwide then hired me, but it went further than that. I mean, so I ended up going to places like Antarctica with them. I had already been there with uh Victor Emmanuel Nature Tours with they hired me to be a guide lecturer. But I also with Oceanwide, I I went to Svalbard, I went to many other places where they traveled, where they had trips. And ultimately, um the same guy, he's a he's a Dutch man, the same guy said, Um, why don't you do your own trip your way? So I chartered one of their ships, a full charter in 2010, plan my own itinerary, hired my own expedition leader, doctor, ship doctor, you know, the works, the staff, brought my own staff and signed a contract for a lot of money. And three months after I signed the co contract, the stock market crashed. It's the crash of 2009, which now is in a big way. Yeah. I needed to raise half a milli more than half a million dollars in less than 18 months with the stock market crash. I did it. I did it. I'm the only person Yep, I'm the only person that did it that did a full charter in Antarctica that season. Everybody else just walked away from their charters and left their deposits on the table. And I just I did it. I pulled off, it sold out the whole trip. We did an epic itinerary, which other people tried to copy. Um, no problem with that, but it was impossible it was just an itinerary that was like almost impossible. The expedition leader sent me an email one day. I was in South Africa, got his email, and he said, You need to decide today what you want to do in the Falkland Islands. I've laid out three plans plan A, B, C, and plan D is called the Bold and the Daring and the Naughty. I said, I'll take it. I'll take plan D. The bold, the daring, and the naughty. And we executed it and then we did it. So um, yeah, it was an amazing trip. Truly amazing.

SPEAKER_04 53:58

That's fantastic. It's a half million dollars to charter a boat like that and put a crew out there.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Much more than that now. Much, much more.

SPEAKER_04 54:09

Much more. Wow. So tell me, we're running out of time, unfortunately. This always pains me when I get there, but I've got to be selfish here the last couple minutes. My wife and I are going to the Galapagos in a couple of months. Well, not a couple, it's about six months. Tell me about what how were your couple of trips that you went there? What did you think?

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Oh, I've been there five times. I also chartered my own vessels in the Galapagos. No surprise. And in Svalbard. In Svalbard. I did two charter trips in Svalbard on a little s vessel, a little Swedish vessel, twelve people. Galapagos, I hope you're going on a s one of the small yachts with only 16 people.

SPEAKER_04 54:49

We're going, it's not that, I think it's 40 people. It's National Geographic, one of their vessels. Um, so it's it's certainly relatively small.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Yeah. It's too many people for me in the Galapagos.

SPEAKER_04 55:04

But um, for you anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

Yes, true. But that is too many people for me on a ship, really. I like very small numbers. Yeah, really small. Um one thing that really a lot of people are surprised about is how difficult it can be walking. Walking on uneven lava can be very difficult. So um, I would say, you know, maybe walking sticks help a lot of people. Okay. Um, that might be thing to think about, but the wildlife is great. It's tame. You'll have a you'll definitely you'll have a Galapagos, you know, you'll have an Ecuadorian guide on board with you, I'm sure. Um, so they they're very like it's very well done now. There were a few years where the national park system really messed up and they made it unbearable to go there. Now it's very well done. So at least the last one.

SPEAKER_04 56:00

I'll I'll fill you in on it uh when we get back and tell you how it went. Um, I'm gonna throw my email up if you're watching this on YouTube. Uh if you're not, if you're listening, it's Scott at naturaliscott.com. If you've got questions for me about the show or about Debbie, or maybe you want me to forward something to her, just go ahead and send it to me and I will take care of that. And now Debbie is going to grace us with an idea that she has of a book that we should look at. Um, so Debbie, we had talked about you picking a book to recommend to our readers. Tell us what that is.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Well, I mean, I have well, I have a huge library, huge, like way over a thousand books. And the first book that really came to my mind, I couldn't think of any other book that was better, is Um Cry of the Kalahari. And it's about this young couple, Mark and Delia Owens, who go to the Kalahari Desert to live and study lions, elephants first, then lions and hyenas as well. And um it won't surprise you, but they live thousands of miles from any nearest human habitat. Um, the I was paging through the book. I mean, this is all before digital anything. This is before the internet in 1986. I bought the book. And it was it was a very good seller. It's a very easy read. Um, but they live in the middle of nowhere for seven years. They lived in the Kalahari Desert. And uh the conditions are amazing.

SPEAKER_04 57:35

Well, if you're thank you, if you're watching this on YouTube, there'll be a um uh the cover will be up on the screen so you can take a peek at it, maybe get a copy. And if you are watching us on YouTube, this is the one favor I would ask. Do me a favor and reach over and click subscribe. Um there's no cost to it, there's there's not a big deal. It takes about a second and a half. But every time you do, YouTube pushes these podcasts out to more people, and so others can hear what Debbie has to say, and it allows me to invite more guests. So um, if you would please do that, maybe drop a comment or click like or whatever it is. Uh Debbie, I want to say thank you so much. I I always enjoy our conversations. I learn something every time. I find you to be a fascinating and charming woman, and um I am so glad that you are our guest today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 58:25

You bet. And now as I try to close every show, um, I like to encourage our guests to get outside. Today I'm gonna add get out on the water or get to San Benito County, maybe in April of 27. Um, and the last thing I close with every time is when you are outside, make sure to stay safe and stay curious. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Debbie, thank you again for being our guest.

SPEAKER_00 58:53

You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris. Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra. Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at naturally Scott Harris. If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.