A new sperm whale in our catalog!

After two days of heavy rain on São Miguel Island, today’s morning, despite being gray and cold, presented favorable sea conditions for a whale watching trip and… there we went!

Our lookout André, who was in Relva, gave us the indication that a pod of dolphins was moving ahead to the west and after about 20 minutes of travel, we could see dorsal fins on our front: Bottlenose dolphins! It was a small group, about 20 individuals with some juveniles, but they didn’t show to be very curious about the boats. The group was performing small dives but never approached the boats. We quickly realized there was something else to see when the lookout said that a bigger animal had just dived a few miles west of our position.

We reached the area when the animal had 20 minutes of dive. André managed to identify the animal and we assumed that it was a male sperm whale, when we turned on the hydrophone and we could hear a very metallic sound! We managed to understand where it was going and, after one hour of dive, a member of the crew of our catamaran managed to see the blow! As we approached the animal, there was no doubt that we were right and that it was a bull sperm whale! A big animal, with a strong blow and a big dominant head! We were thinking that he would stay about 10 to 15 minutes on the surface oxygenating his blood after a long dive, but he was in a hurry to get back to the depths and quickly raised his majestic tail! We were then able to take a photo of its tail and it is a new animal for our identification photo catalog. It is always important to get the tail to know which individual it is, especially in the case of males that are migratory and can give us crucial information about their migration routes. This one will be easy to recognize again thanks to some well-healed injuries on his top side of the fluke.

We knew that the weather would get worse again in the afternoon and the clouds full of water left no doubt that it would rain again soon. Then we started our way back to Ponta Delgada, always trying to see some more species until a customer pointed to some splashes! It was another group of dolphins, but this time, they were common dolphins! It was a very small group, only four individuals but very curious! Possibly the rest of the group would be in the area looking for food, but our four brave dolphins approached and delighted everyone as they calmly emerged to the surface.

Despite the rain, we had a challenging trip and were rewarded with three resident species, including a large male sperm whale and even a flying fish! The weather conditions for tomorrow still allow us to go out, but then we have bad weather again… That’s why… Tomorrow is the day!