Futurismo Biologists TeamWhat a wonderful day! We saw total of 4 different cetacean species!
In the morning we started our trip sighting a group of common dolphins, one of the resident species here in the Azores.
They were very social and bowriding next to our boat. But our lookouts spotted something else far away, a very special surprise was waiting for us really close to the north coast of São Miguel.. a group of three Sowerby’s beaked whales! They were very calm and resting, it is hard to sight this species, they spend very little time on the surface.
After leaving this group, we waited a little for another surprise, a male sperm whale suddenly appeared, after resting a little bit, it went for a deep dive showing its tail!
In the way back to Ponta Delgada, we also could see a turtle, a shark and lot of portuguese man-o-war! It was a morning full of life!
In the afternoon as we left the marina our look out told us that there were some sperm whales around, so our hopes for the trip were very high!
After going a little further away from the coast we saw two tails, unfortunately those were the tails of two sperm whales that had just gone for a deep dive… But we didn’t give up because there was the possibility of having more individuals around, so we asked our guests to keep their eyes open and soon enough we saw a blow! Our guests were delighted!
We observed the whale breathing and the huge cloud of water it makes, but after a while the individual went for a dive leaving everybody in awe as it showed its tail.
As we were leaving to look for other animals one of our guests screamed “look, there’s another blow!” and there it was two more sperm whales, a mom and a juvenile. They looked very peaceful, but as soon the mom went for a dive the juvenile stayed on the surface and started playing, doing tail throws and turning its belly up, an amazing sighting… After a little bit we left the animals and went to look for other species.
We were super lucky because we found Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, the first sighting from 2020 of our tourist dolphins! This species appears in the Azores when the seawater temperature increases, so, mainly during the summer months. It was a big group, there was adults and juveniles and they were socializing a lot with the boat, jumping and also bow riding. The perfect way to end…The trip back to Ponta Delgada was long but worth it! Join us for an amazing trip 😉
Futurismo Biologists Team
Sandrina Rodrigues
