February 2014 sighting statistics

February has been a month full of dolphins and some baleen whales. The common dolphins have in general been in small spread out groups and we have seen them especially around fishing boats as we have had lots of mackerel in our waters. The bottlenose dolphins have been large groups of 50 to 80 dolphins (maybe more), and many times we have resighted the same group where we have 2 well-known dolphins: Egípcio and Submarine. And then the baleen whales, we had a beautiful encounter with a humpback whale, we could see its white flippers through the water and then it fluked just in front of us. There have been other baleen whales out there as well, that we tried to see the, but ended up only seeing blows far away and footprints (smooth patches on the surface from the whale’s flukes). It gives us great hope for March, as the baleen whale season is starting, so far we just have had a little taste of it. We have also seen a few loggerhead turtles, Portuguese man-o-war, yellow-legged gulls, glaucous gulls, great skua, little egrets, Cory’s shearwaters, black-legged kittiwakes and the ruddy turnstones are running around in the marina.