Futurismo Biologists TeamMarch was an incredible month for whale watching in São Miguel island. We had the pleasure of spotting a variety of marine life during our trips.
The highlight of this month were the blue whales, the largest animal on earth! We spotted them in 80% of our trips. Not only it is unique to sight blue whales, but some of them gave us the opportunity to see their fluke. The most curious part of this is that all sightings were around the same area. We took pictures for photo-identification, which will be used for research to study their movements and migrations, and know if they are new in the area or if they already passed here.
Our resident species did not disappoint us. Common dolphins showed up for every trip of the month to share their joy with our guests. We saw them multiple times feeding together with Cory’s shearwater, migratory seabirds, which makes it such an incredible sighting showing marine life at its wildest.
Another of our resident dolphins, the bottlenose dolphin, the most known dolphin species, visited our boats 40% of the days, bow-riding and showing us their elegance.
The last resident and shyer dolphin species, the Risso’s dolphins, were seen in a small group which included some calves.
Sperm whales, our only resident whale, were spotted in half of the trips. The best sighting was a calf sperm whale being very curious about us and approaching our boat.
Last but not least, other two species of baleen whales visited us. This marks the beginning of the spring and the season of the migratory whales! We were lucky to see fin whales in half of the trips, always in the same area as the blue whales. Lastly, we were excited to see humpback whales for the first time of the year! With the pictures of their tails, we did some photo-identification and realised that it was the first time that we were seeing these individuals.
Join us to see how the month of April will surprise us!
Futurismo Biologists Team
Futurismo Biologists Team
Sandrina Rodrigues
