A rare encounter with a Bryde’s whale

Today we had a rare encounter with a Bryde’s (pronounced broo-dess) whale off the south coast of São Miguel Island. This is considered to be more of a tropical whale species, one that only visits the Azores some years when we have their prefered conditions. The last year that we encountered them here was in 2013. But the Bryde’s whale wasn’t the only whale species that we encountered, as we also had many of our resident sperm whales around in the morning, including at least 3 small calves. We got to see several tails from the adult sperm whales in the group, which is be great for our photo-ID research. As for dolphins, there were a lot of them around today. During both the morning and afternoon we encountered large feeding groups of Atlantic spotted dolphins together with Cory’s shearwaters. In the afternoon the feeding frenzy also included a group of common dolphins. 

Photos from today: