In this paper an impression is presented of the seabirds observed during a trip on board of MV Plancius from the Netherlands to the Cape Verde Islands in winter 1985/86, passing by Guernsey (Channel Islands), La Coruña (NW-Spain), Madeira, Selvagem Grande, Agadir (Morocco) and Lanzarote and Alegranza (Canary Islands). Sometimes systematic counts were carried out as suggested by Tasker et al. (1984), but out on the open ocean bird densities proved to be so low, that the need was felt to drop the limitations of this method and look out in a more opportunistic way for birds. In these so-called ’ocean deserts’ only Kittiwakes and Great Skuas were observed with some regularity, the latter seemingly dependent on the presence of the first. Just to the north of the Cape Verde Islands in the region East Tropic (cf. Figure 1) even these species became very scarce. Bird ensities in coastal waters were distinctly higher than further offshore, except for the Bay of Biscay where even at large distances from the coast and in extremely deep waters reasonable numbers of birds were seen. Unfortunately, however, the severe weather conditions here made systematic observation impossible. A brief species accoutn is given for each of the species observed and table 2 summarizes the observations made at sea in each of the eight regions visited. Some interesting observations include several hundreds of Manx Shearwaters, apparently containing all three west palearctic subspecies, joining with Lesser Black-backed and (presumably Yellow-legged) Herring Gulls behind fishing vessels on the roads of Agadir, 11 individuals of Brown Booby scanning the coastal waters of the Cape Verde Islands and 3 Magnificent Friagetbirds waiting for their chances to rob them of their preys, 4 Red-billed Tropicbirds in the same area and all five likely species of storm petrel in the western palearctic. Details are given on subspecific identities of the species observed (wherever relevant) and some remarks are made concerning field identification features.