Cloudy day full of fins!

We continued with the grey sky in the Azores, although the weather was not good, the sea has once again given us new encounters with our friends the cetaceans.

At the beginning of our trip, we were able to enjoy a small group of bottlenose dolphins, who were as eager as we were to interact since they did not hesitate to come to meet us. From our zodiac we have been able to see an individual with a white mark on the dorsal fin. This is very useful for our work of photo-identification of individuals and classifying residents and new individuals. We even recognized Kiss underwater in our swimming with dolphin activity. This animal has a deformation on its beak and it looks like having a kissing mouth.

We continued with our trip and the next stop was with the shy Risso’s dolphins, although being a more elusive species, we have been able to enjoy their company for quite some time and we have even sighted a baby from last season. This baby had hardly any marks on the skin, due to his youth. Over time, interactions with other animals as well as members of their own species will cause white scars that appear on their bodies, giving them a whitish appearance in adulthood.

Our catamaran rediscovered Tonga, a spermwhale who showed us its beautiful fluke before diving to feed in the depths, approximately four miles off the coast of São Miguel Island. In case you missed our article yesterday (hyperlink), Tonga is a female sperm whale, which has been in our catalog since 2010. Thanks to this catalog there is a record of many individuals with which we can recognize them again when they decide to greet us on our daily excursion. 

Also today we had a fleeting encounter with a flying fish and the company throughout the trip of Cory’s shearwater, common terns and yellow-legged gulls. If you don’t want to miss all these great experiences, book with us soon!