Even on grey days the cetaceans light us up

We started and ended our tour on the catamaran with rain but the cetaceans were wet anyway. We had the chance to meet three times bottlenose dolphins. At the beginning on their own then in the area of the short finned pilot whales and in the end they approached the sperm whales.

The bottlenose dolphins of the beginning were travelling against the wind and waves and among them was a calf we had seen before. It had a deformation on its tail stock, which is the part between its dorsal fin and the tail.  A bit later, we met their bigger cousins a member of the blackfish but they are black mammals, no fish. They can be easily distinguished by their broad dorsal fin, their big round head their black coloured skin with some lighter lines over their back.

The pilot whale is also bigger and heavier than the bottlenose dolphins even though the bottlenose are already impressive in size with their four meters and 650 kg but a pilot whale can reach more than 7 m and up to three tons. So they were considered as whales due to do their big size eventhough they are genetically very similar to the other dolphins which have their dorsal fin quite centred or even a bit towards the front. So all the dolphins are whales as they are considered toothed whales but dolphin is a bit more specific.

The sperm whales are the biggest of the toothed whales but they don’t belong to the dolphin family as they split earlier apart from each other in their evolution. Today we were lucky to see them gathering. At one time we counted 10 individuals forming one line. At some moment they were socialising and rolling a bit or lying like a log on the water surface before going for shallow dives again. They were females with their offspring. They are even bigger then the ones before as a new born’s size is already around four meters and 1 ton in weight and females reach up to twelve meters and 20 tons. So the arriving bottlenose dolphins of a bulls size looked small next to them. In any condition it is always a pleasure to meet the gentle giants of the Atlantic Ocean and there was even more out there.

The swimming with dolphin activity managed to swim with common dolphins and striped dolphins which is something very special as the striped dolphins usually swim so fast that it is hard to reach them.

Today was a day of meetings, even of different species which is not happening every day. So we feel blessed to have had the chance to be part of this reunions and are awaiting you to!