December 2008 sighting statistics

Our whale watching tours continue throughout the year, as all seasons of the year there are whales and dolphins around the Azores. During the month of December we encountered six different cetacean (dolphin a and whale) species: the residents: sperm whale, common dolphin, bottlenose dolphin and Risso´s dolphins and the seasonal species: Atlantic spotted dolphins (on the last day of the year for the first time on record) and pilot whales. Sighting frequencies (days encountered of all the days we went to sea) are indicated by the bars in the graph above and common names of each of these species are listed below (ordered by those encountered first):