azwhales
We had a long trip to get to an area with some cetaceans, but when we got there it was definitely worth the trip!
What a morning! We spotted sperm whales with bottlenose dolphins in the same area.
The sperm whale seemed to be quite okay with our presence and passed our boat quite close. Then we saw that it had a weird skin, it looked like it was peeling and had some small lesions on it. After a few moments with this whale, it went for a deep dive and we saw the fluke before it disappeared. We stayed with the bottlenose dolphins for a couple of minutes before we got a call from the look-out that we had another species to see. So, we continued our journey to another area.
On the way there, we found striped dolphins! We could not stay long because something else was waiting for us.
We then continued, and encountered another species! We saw common dolphins! But again, these were not the species that we were looking for. So, we only stayed with the common dolphins for a couple of minutes, and then continued.
Finally, we got to the area of the species we were looking for. It was a fin whale, so it looks like we still have some baleen whales around the area!
The fin whale had an incredible behaviour. It was swimming really slowly and came close to out boat and we could see the entire body. It was only a little bit bigger than our rib, so it was most likely a young animal, a juvenile. It even swam on its back and we could see the white belly underwater, the pectoral fins, and the fluke. Wow, what a lucky morning, with 5 different species of cetaceans!
In the afternoon We were with some sperm whales doing a lot of behaviors shallow dive to do horizontal dives and feeding dive showing the tails to go for a vertical dive. Also we could see a big male, we are not sure if this male is Mr. Liable our resident male that we see out off Sao Miguel. One thing is true, we are being really lucky with all these days having sperm whales here around. Also some of our boats spotted striped dolphins.
azwhales
Futurismo Biologists Team
Sandrina Rodrigues
