May 2015 Statistics Report

From the 1st to 28th of May we sighted 11 different species of Cetaceans!

Four Species of Baleen Whales: Blue, Fin, Sei and Humpback Whales;

One Species of Toothed Whales: Sperm Whales;

Six Species of Dolphins: Bottlenose, Common, Striped and Risso’s Dolphins. And at last False Killer Whales and Pilot Whales.

Like we mentioned on our previous post, these last few weeks have been amazing. So many species! So many amazing moments out in the ocean…

The highlights of these past weeks were:

On the 4th of May the group of False Killer Whales right in front of Vila Franca! (http://www.azoreswhalewatch.com/cetaceans/false-killer-whales-in-front-of-vila-franca-do-campo/)

The amazing quantity of diferente species of Baleen Whales. These past few weeks we saw 4 out of the 6 species that can be seen in Azores. Baleen Whales pass through here in the Spring on their way further North  to their summer feeding grounds. The Baleen Whales season is almost ending so we are definitely enjoying it as much as possible!

Let’s not forget our Resident Species of Whales: The Sperm Whales.

They were also around during these past few weeks. On one of our tours we even had a juvenile really close to our boat! Juveniles and calves are known to get curious, so sometimes they come to us and do some “Human Watching”.

On the 24th of May we spotted 3 Male Sperm Whales together. Male Sperm Whales can reach 18 meters in length and weight more than 50 tons. It is quite impressive to see them. Specially 3 of them together!

Did you know that the Sperm Whale is the biggest toothed animal in the world?

On this same tour of the male Sperm Whale sighting, we were given a show by a big group of Striped Dolphins!

Take a look on the picture below.

Striped Dolphins are very agile, fast and acrobatic. As it is possible to see in the previous picture. They gave us quite a show! A group of about 50, all jumping and moving at great speed.

These dolphins can reach 2,6 meters and weight up to 150 kg. They are named Striped because of the black stripes that extend from their eyes to under the belly just prior to the tail stock.

It is very frequent to see Striped Dolphisn with this baheviour. Most of the times we spot them actually is like this!

So this is it for these Statistics Report. Stay tuned for more updates!

 

 

Stephanie Almeida

About Stephanie Almeida

Stephanie is Guide at TERRA AZUL since 2013 and Operations Assistant since 2017. Contributed for several years on Data collection for MONICET – The Azores Islands Cetaceans Research & Conservation long-term monitoring project.

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