azwhales
This morning, we still had the chance to go out to the big Atlantic Ocean before the bad weather is arriving. We had already a bit of wind but no big waves.
We went Westward where we found a sperm whale. It was quite an atypical moment as the sperm whale turned around facing us for quite a while. Then, he rolled and showed us half of its fluke and we could see his clearer belly shimmering through the water surface before disappearing deeper in the water column. He repeated this rolling behaviour three times in total and at the end, arched his back and lifted the tail only slightly at the height of the water surface without revealing his identity.
As this whale did not seem to be hungry and repeatedly went for shallow dives, we went on to see the bottlenose dolphins who were in a big group of different age classes. They were a nice sight! Some approached the boat, some leaped or breached and showed us their different markings on their bodies which helps us identify individuals for our research and conservation effort.
In the zodiac boats, we also saw a group of common dolphins.
azwhales
Futurismo Biologists Team
Sandrina Rodrigues
