Equipa de Biólogos da Futurismo
April has come to an end and it has been a spectacular month!
It has been full of dolphins! We had the highest sighting rate of the common dolphins, followed by the bottlenose dolphins.
In terms of whales, we had several species sightings as well! April is the start of Baleen whale season; however, it seems like the whales arrived slightly late this year. In the first 10 days of April, we had not seen any baleen whales. We did have an unusual visitor on the 9th of April, when we had a great encounter with false killer whales! We see these species only irregularly, so it is always a surprise when they show up!
Then, our first encounter of a baleen whale was the humpback whale on the 11th of April. We had a total of four sightings of humpback whales. Then, our first blue whale sighting was the 21st of April. This was followed by the fin whale and Sei whale encounter on the 26th of April.
The last species that we sighted, only once this month, was a group of Risso’s dolphins! We had some other bird species that we sighted; several Pomarine skuas, almost daily sightings of the common terns, and the great skuas. We even managed to see loggerhead turtles 9 days this month!
So, although we started to have regular sightings of baleen whales in the last month of April, we had a month full of marine mammals, birds, and turtles! Let’s see what May will bring us!
Equipa de Biólogos da Futurismo
Sandrina Rodrigues
