What a busy Fin whale!

What a wonderful morning. We even commented on our boat “4 Ventos” that we have already seen lakes with more waves.

After leaving of Ponta Delgada we immediately saw a lot of sea birds, among them many seagulls and also our Cory’s shearwater friends. We often use seabirds to find dolphins. When the dolphins are feeding, sometimes these birds take the opportunity to also fill their bellies with fish, since they feed basically on the same type of fish.

After a few minutes we found some fins… bottlenose dolphins! It was a small group, but really curious to say “hello” to our passengers. We even had the opportunity to see a big jump that we weren’t expecting and lots of babies playing with the waves on our boat. As you can imagine, the children on board were delirious with this spectacle of dolphins in nature.

After seeing dolphins, we received information from our lookouts: “whale in sight!”, they said on the radio! We then saw the second largest animal in the world… THE FIN WHALE! It was not in the mood to play, it seemed busy looking for food, since it was coming to the surface to breathe only 2 times before diving for 10 minutes more.

After about 10 minutes the whale was a little more curious and we were able to confirm the species. Sometimes it is complicated to be able to identify baleen whales when they are at a distance as they are very similar, but after we did it! We saw that the lower right jaw of the whale was white … there was no doubt that it was a fin whale.

We see this species more often during spring when the water is cooler, but these animals are always welcome during our whale and dolphin watching.