Friendly Sei whales, lots of dolphins and pilot whales!

Today was a great day to do Whale watching! The animals were particularly curious and we had just a pinch of adrenaline with a wavy sea 😀

During the morning we had the most amazing encounter with 4 Sei whales! They were feeding together with a group of Cory’s and Great Shearwaters 😀 When we see Sei whales, they are usually a bit fast, spend a bit of time underwater and keep some distance from the boat… But today it was nothing like that! The 4 whales were so close! Some of them almost 6 meters away from the boat 😀

 

 

They were having a breakfast of small schooling fish and sharing it with a mixed group of Cory’s Shearwaters and Great Shearwaters. This was very interesting as well since we mostly see flocks of Cory’s Shearwaters with 2 or 3 Great Shearwater’s but today it was the other way around 😀

 

 

In the afternoon the Sei whales decided to go somewhere else as we couldn’t find them anymore, however we enjoyed the tour very much in the company of a nice group of common dolphins and their tiny babies. The group was fast travelling and few individuals were head-slapping. Some Cory’s shearwaters were surveying them, being aware that soon they could join a “fishy” feast 🙂

 

The tour though, was meant to be even more special as Filipe spotted something, but due to high reflection he couldn’t confirm the species, so we went to check it out and there they were: few short-finned pilot whales! This is a species we don’t see very often, being migratory it occurs in the Azores between spring and summer, but lack a defined pattern. Especially this year we didn’t see them a lot so their sight was truly a nice surprise! 😀

 

As a cherry on the cake we saw a young loggerhead turtle logging at the surface. What are you waiting for? Come and join us!