Sandrina RodriguesHello everyone! Today we started the tour with a very sunny day and a fairly calm sea. As soon as we left the port of Ponta Delgada, about 10 minutes away, we have found a group of bottlenose dolphins. They were a little bit shy but surely it was because they were looking for their breakfast so they couldn’t pay much attention to us.
Then we came across a very large group of Atlantic spotted dolphins, although they were a bit spread out we managed to see them very well and some of them even came towards our boats to bowride the waves with us.
After that amazing encounter, our look-outs told us that they saw some blows pretty far away from where we were, while we were heading towards the indicated location we saw two loggerhead turtles! After that, we saw one female sperm whale that is already known as Orca and can be identified because she has a white mark on her back. She was resting on the surface and when we were thinking of returning back to port, we saw a sperm whale with TWO calves!! The sperm whale is called “Bear Paw” probably one of the calves was hers and the other was from another female that was probably foraging at 1000m deep.
All these females belong to our well known “Red group”. Female sperm whales travel together with their calves, the calves can’t dive as much as their mummies so other members of the group take care of all the calves on the surface while the others are hunting. When they return the other one that was taking care can go to have some lunch.
Some other boats saw different sperm whales too, probably all from the same family! If you want to see it in person don’t think about it anymore and ! we are waiting for you!
Futurismo Biologists Team
Futurismo Biologists Team
Sandrina Rodrigues
