Wildlife photographer James Bennett captured images of the Kerguelen petrel and grey petrel off the coast of Port Macquarie, New South Wales (NSW), in the past fortnight. Neither species had previously been recorded "live at sea" in NSW. Bennett described the experience as overwhelming, saying, "It's going to take me a long time to fully process seeing these birds."

BirdLife Australia's Mick Roderick, a member of the New South Wales Ornithological Records Appraisal Committee (NSW ORAC), confirmed the sightings as "irrefutable." He noted that prior to this, NSW ORAC had accepted only one record of a grey petrel in NSW, which was a bird found washed ashore at Ballina in 1985.

Monash University ornithologist Rohan Clarke characterized the appearance of these sub-Antarctic seabirds off the NSW Mid North Coast as part of a broader "very rare event." Clarke explained that "relatively large numbers of cold-water species," which usually disperse across vast distances in the Southern Ocean, are being reported much farther north than usual, with some sightings as far north as central Queensland.

There were no signs of illness in the petrels, and experts are not linking the sightings to bird flu detections. Bennett recalled a similar event in the 1990s when large numbers of Kerguelen petrels washed up on beaches in southern Australia.

Most of the species involved in this event regularly occur as far north as Tasmania, making their presence off NSW particularly notable.

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