The whales show goes on: today with humpback whales!

After having orcas yesterday, we did not expect to be as lucky as we were today.

The day started off with a rough sea and dark clouds. Once we encountered the bottlenose dolphins, our day was saved! We had quite a large group feeding with lots of active Cory’s shearwaters at the surface.

Next, we continued to another area to search for another species. Our vigias had not spotted anything else but we wanted to try our luck. After searching for about 15 minutes we received a call from our vigias that they had spotted a blow of a humpback whale! Could it be? YES! It was indeed a humpback whale. At first, we could only see its dorsal fin and small parts of its fluke. After a while we spotted common dolphins in the same area, along with active Cory’s shearwaters again. It seemed like the dolphins were feeding in the same area as the humpback whale was! And then in fact, we saw that the humpback whale was feeding as well. Suddenly, we saw a huge mouth open up at the surface and close and we could see the whale’s throat pleats completely stretched!

It was spectacular to see this large animal, that can reach 18 meters, feeding amongst a group of dolphins. It was not an easy encounter though. It appeared that the humpback whale was foraging underwater and surfaced in random areas. So, while we were waiting for the humpback whale to resurface, one of our biologists identified a Manx shearwater amongst the Cory’s shearwaters.

The humpback whale remained underwater for a while until it surfaced again, but this time showed its entire body. It was a full breach! And a few minutes again, a second breach, right in front of the boat!

After this encounter, we had to return to the base, and everybody had a smile on their face regardless of the rough sea we had to deal with on the way back. This one was not the first humpback whale we saw during the year. Indeed, in January we were lucky and saw another one. Back at the base, Miranda – one of our biologists – had a look in the catalogue of humpback whales sighted here in São Miguel and discovered that we did not have a match. It is now a new whale in our catalogue! 

What a day!