Mirbat Arabian Sea Pelagic
Trip Details
- Departure
- Mirbat Port, Dhofar, Oman
- Schedule
- Year-round on request; trips depart at approximately 07:30 and last around 3.5 hours; contact Captain Hatem via WhatsApp (+968 9908 8815) to confirm availability and arrange a departure; peak Jouanin's Petrel and overall seabird diversity: October–November; peak raw seabird numbers (Persian Shearwater in hundreds of thousands): June–September (Khareef southwest monsoon)
- Price
- OMR 25 per person (approximately £50 / €60 at current exchange rates); confirm current pricing with Captain Hatem via WhatsApp
About This Trip
The Mirbat Arabian Sea Pelagic is operated by Captain Hatem from Mirbat Port on the Dhofar coast of southern Oman, and stands out as one of the most extraordinary small-boat pelagic birding experiences anywhere in the world. The reason is bathymetric: the Dhofar coastline sits on the edge of the Arabian Sea abyssal margin, and the seafloor drops to approximately 910 metres depth within metres of the shoreline — there is no continental shelf here. A boat leaving Mirbat harbour is in true pelagic waters almost immediately, with open-ocean tubenoses visible before the port has disappeared behind the stern.
The Mirbat pelagic is globally renowned as the single most reliable location on Earth for Jouanin's Petrel (Bulweria fallax), one of the most range-restricted and poorly-known gadfly petrels in the world. This compact, all-dark Bulweria petrel breeds on remote islands including Socotra (Yemen) and the Kuria Muria (Hallaniyat) Islands off Dhofar, and is only regularly and predictably encountered at sea from Mirbat during the post-monsoon period (October–November), when individuals congregate in internationally significant numbers alongside the vessel responding to chum. Flesh-footed Shearwater and Sooty Shearwater join the chum slick during this window. The Khareef season (southwest monsoon, June–September) produces the highest raw seabird densities: intense coastal upwelling drives Persian Shearwater — which breeds on the Daymaniyat Islands offshore Muscat and disperses widely during the monsoon — to concentrations in the hundreds of thousands off Dhofar, while Wilson's Storm-Petrel reaches extraordinary numbers. The Khareef also produces reliable Masked Booby, Brown Booby, Red-billed Tropicbird, and parties of Socotra Cormorant.
Trips depart at approximately 07:30 and last around 3.5 hours, spending the middle portion of the trip on the open Arabian Sea over the abyssal margin where the combination of upwelling productivity and deep-water habitat concentrates the target species. Chum is deployed to attract tubenoses to close range alongside the boat. Price is OMR 25 per person (approximately £50 / €60) and bookings are arranged directly with Captain Hatem via WhatsApp (+968 9908 8815). The product is branded as Mirbat Pelagics Birding Oman with a public Facebook presence and a detailed listing on oman-birding.com/mirbat-pelagics. The eBird hotspot for the Mirbat Pelagic is L4008449.