Five sperm whales, bottlenose and common dolphins today in São Miguel

Today we started to receive some strong wind that will get worse in the next few days … but it was possible to make an excellent trip with 3 of our resident species.

We started our journey close to Relva, where we have one of our lookouts. This lookout has spotted a great blow from a baleen whale, but it was not in the mood to be seen. When working with wild animals this can happen. These animals are free and wild, which means that they are in search of food and not boats. Visiting animals in the wild requires patience and a lot of “good eye”.

We decided to leave the area for an area where the sea was calmer. On the way, we met a huge group of bottlenose dolphins that were taking advantage of the waves to surf… Some people say that dolphins invented surf … and, we humans thought it was funny and decided to copy the idea. This group was composed of young animals, but full of energy.

We continued our journey because our lookout from “40” spotted diagonal blows … can you guess what it was??? That’s right, SPERM WHALES! There were about 5 young animals that were, some relaxing and others playing with the waves. In this sighting, it was possible to observe two tails that are not yet in our sperm whale catalog … which means new tails and new whales passing by! 🙂

When we returned to Ponta Delgada we had another surprise, common dolphins full of energy and willingness to show their exotic body pattern in the shape of an hourglass. The first one which visted us was a super curious young common dolphin which found us very interesting and circulated the boat multiple times. It was really fun :grin: . Don’t worry, it seemed to be alone, but the rest of the group was very close too, surrounded by Cory’s shearwaters and common terns. All of them busy foraging. Along the way, a few more treasures appeared like yellow-legged gulls and Portuguese man-o-war, beautiful and dangerous! It was a morning full of energy and waves … our visitors were great sailors, as they found the bottlenose dolphins and behaved very well on this adventurous trip.