First spotted dolphins in Pico Island

Aboard our last trips Southwards of Pico’s coast, we’ve been having amazingly beautiful and inspiring trips through the Ocean. Always accompanied by Cory’s Shearwaters that many times also represent our best hints to lead our way up to the top predators we are looking for, marine mammals!
Risso’s dolphins have been present in almost all of our trips. As deep divers, in-between their surface breathings they will go deeper, many times passing under our boat leaving us with vanishing white blue slowly disappearing into the deep blue. The male’s pods of Risso’s have been showing some curiosity towards us, sometimes changing their direction to approach our boat just a little bit more. As usual, they are quite a ‘shy’ species, so we should approach them respectfully and correctly.  We had the pleasure to be observing one Risso’s juvenile jumping systematically over some minutes, and for sure it left us wondering onboard about the many possible reasons that led him up to this funny behaviour. 

Common dolphins have the ability to make our day happier but for the last days, we’ve been sighting them much less frequently than usual… and when we sighted them it was in mixed groups with the striped dolphins. Two species with quite different behaviours together in the same pod makes every sighting different! Together with the striped dolphins and the common dolphins we’ve been spotting numerous calves.

On top of this, during the past week, we’ve been also having the first sightings of spotted dolphins out of Pico! They arrive here as our waters get warmer, on average above the 20ºC and return South when it will be too cold for them over here. This amazing species that we missed so much is back into our waters!


The sperm whales have also been present in the major part of our trips, and with the help of our hydrophone, we can make our sightings better and more respectful. We’ve been mostly with female groups accompanied by their growing juveniles and calves. 

 



As they are at the surface, sperm whales rest deeply and breath to re-oxygenate their blood and tissues before the next deep dive but sometimes, we also have the amazing opportunity to observe them socializing with each other as they stay at surface, side by side.

The Sei whales
are still passing on the south coast of Pico. Their most observed
behaviour by us is of travelling, but they leave us completely amazed as
we navigate along with them or even when we are waiting for them to
surface in-between their dives. Everyone onboard stays searching over
the surroundings for the big high blow that by then will be almost
breaking through the water’s surface!

 

 

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